School Committee - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. It's 738. I'd like to call together the May 28th, 2026 school committee meeting. If you would please rise and join me in the pledge of allegiance. All right, at this time, I'd like to turn the meeting over to Superintendent Kelly Clinchy, who will help facilitate the election of the new school committee chair. Thank you. Good evening, everybody.

As you've read on the agenda, every year we reorganize the school committee. And tonight, the first order of business is to elect a new chair. These positions run on a yearly basis, so we have elections every year. At this time, I'll accept nominations for position of chair.

I'd like to nominate Elaine Santelman.

Second. Second. Perfect. And I do have to ask this. Any other nominations? Consider the nominations closed. I'd like to entertain a motion for electing Elaine Santelman as chair of the school committee.

I move that we elect Elaine Sandelman as chair of the school committee.

Second. I'll second that. Perfect. We're going to have a roll call vote this evening, and we'll start with Janine.

Janine, aye. Elaine, aye.

Justin McCarthy, aye. Sean Aaron, aye.

Emily Staver, aye.

Congratulations, Elaine.

Thank you very much.

Then I'll turn the meeting over to you.

Thank you very much. While I'm Before we continue with the rest of the officers, I just want to express my gratitude to Justin for his many long years as chair. He's been the chair as long as I've been on the school committee. I think as long as all of us have been on the school committee. I don't know a school committee without you as chair. But I do appreciate all of the hard work I know that goes on behind the scenes, like your leadership. at meetings only touches the tip of the iceberg with the work that you've been doing as chair. So much work behind the scenes with making sure the communication between committee members is solid, that all of our voices are heard, all of your liaison work with other boards in town, your work on the negotiation subcommittee has been a huge amount of time for which I'm very grateful. Your work on the budget subcommittee, I could go on and on, but I'm... just very grateful for your leadership and look forward to your mentorship as I take on this responsibility and give you a well-deserved break.

Thank you very much.

Use your extra time wisely.

We'll do great.

Thank you. Yeah. Okay. So now we need to elect the rest of the board members. So I'd like to entertain nominations for vice chair.

I will nominate Shauna Hearn as vice chair.

Any other nominations? The motion to elect Shauna Hearn as the vice chair.

I will elect Shauna Hearn as the vice chair.

I second. So we'll do a roll call vote. Can you start, Janine? Janine, aye. Elaine Sandlin, aye.

Justin McCarthy, aye.

Shauna Hearn, aye. Annalise Tabor, aye. Welcome to the vice chairmanship. And now we also need to elect a clerk. So I'd like to entertain nominations for the position of clerk.

Nominate Annalise Tabor. Second.

Well, now we need a motion. So any other nominations for clerk? OK, so now we need a motion to elect Annalise Tabor to be the clerk.

I make a motion that we elect Annalise Tabor to be clerk of the school committee. Second.

The roll call vote.

You were the second.

I was the second. Yes. I can do that.

You totally can.

I don't want to lose my power. No, no, no. Yes. Yes. Roll call vote. Janine Wood, aye. Glenn Samplin, aye. John Aaron, aye. Great. We have our new clerk. Congratulations. Thank you.

Okay. You want to officially change the signs or you want me to do it later? Oh, let's do it.

I've got your sign. Change the card. All right.

Thank you. No, my chair is Sean. Yeah. Oh, sorry.

It's all good. There you go. Here's the player. That was cool. Cool. Thank you very much. Okay, so since we're in that business, let's talk about subcommittee appointments. So...

I also want to take this opportunity to clarify what some of these subcommittees are so that we know what we're signing up for. So the first one on the list is superintendent evaluation. So that involves management of the superintendent's evaluation, including compilation of individual members' ratings and presentation of results. So I'm currently on that subcommittee. I'm happy to continue on that one.

Would you be willing to bring on a junior member and help people? Sure. One of the things, I don't know if I'm speaking on a term, but I would love to see us mix up so that someone who's been doing something a while, for example, I'd be happy to stay on the policy subcommittee, but I'd love someone else who has never done it to come on, just because I would love to see us all have these.

Yeah, that's a great idea. Do you have interest in superintendent evaluation? I'd be happy to do that. I'll add you to the list. That's a great idea. So I think, should we go down the list and then vote on the whole slate at the end? Otherwise, we're going to be . So the next one is the Municipal Building Committee. So that's the town committee appointed by the select board to plan for and oversee construction of town and school buildings. So the current assignment is Sean. Is that kind of a liaison position, or is that something where you need another member to join you on the subcommittee? OK. So we've got Sean staying there. The technology subcommittee, so this was one that existed when I joined the school committee three years ago. And the language was already there, so I jumped in. But the language says to serve as a liaison between the school committee and the district's technology department, makes recommendations on the implementation of technology. And so when I first joined the school committee, I met with Julie Lord and her, Natalie Croteau and But basically, they got me up to speed and told me what's happening in the technology department. And then they come pretty frequently for us at school committee to give us updates on what they're doing. So after that point, I really didn't meet with them again because we were hearing from them so frequently at school committee. So it made me realize that it's really... not really a necessary subcommittee because we don't really need a liaison. Like at any time we can ask to hear what's happening with technology. So I wanted to propose that we dissolve the technology subcommittee if that sounds reasonable to everyone else. What do you think?

Hell yeah. I think that's definitely reasonable.

Yeah, okay. It started to feel like I was getting into operations a bit, which... It was kind of an odd topic for a subcommittee.

I wonder if it was created more when we were on the one-to-one.

It was. It was, and we actually talked about this last year. And we decided that we would consider Getting rid of that subcommittee.

Yeah.

Well, let's make it official. We'll get rid of that subcommittee. Thank you.

Yeah. And then legislation. So that assignment involves keeping up to date on pending legislation, working together with the superintendent on keeping the school committee informed of legislative matters, and occasionally expressing the committee's opinion on legislative matters to our representatives. So currently, that's yours, Janine. Do you want to continue? I can stay on that. OK. And again, that feels like sort of a liaison type position. So it's not, I don't think we need a second person on that one. Unless you would like someone.

If someone wants to be part of it, we can just keep that open if we want. Okay.

Is anyone else interested in legislation?

Yeah. I think that would be, yeah, just spread out. I mean, share the work and to share the skill building. Yeah. And to share the contacts. Yes. Yep. Yeah, we do want to keep contacts on to the entire committee. So I appreciate that.

Okay. Then policies, the next one. So this is a full committee responsibility, but there are two members currently that take an organizational lead for this work. So it was Janine and it was Bienal. so and i'll totally chop top me the ropes yeah oh yeah so do you want to teach annalise the rope i'm happy to that sounds like a great you want to do that really yeah so it'll be janine and annalise um and then the oath to bills and payrolls so this requires the ability to stop by central office usually every friday morning to sign school department payroll as official designee representative of the school committee but right now that's you justin correct and we could probably

update the wording on that because it's mostly DocuSign now. So you don't have to stop by central office. I would think it would be appropriate for the chair to assume that responsibility, which also is going to appear later in the meeting. Sneak peek. As much as I love receiving those emails, I'd be happy to pass that along.

Definitely DocuSign. Okay. So put me on that one. Liaison with town government. So this is to serve as a school committee contact with other town boards. So right now that's you, Justin. Annalise had expressed some interest in that. So I'd like you to talk about it.

Sure. I think what I've come to realize is that a lot of the town personnel or town boards or committees are probably going to approach the chair. Might have been why I assumed that position. So happy to make it you because by default, I think people are going to see you. But I'm also happy to continue serving on it because I'm involved in that financial policies working group and have started some of the conversations with some select board members around 28, 29 budget conversations. So it's up to you, really. Do you want me to be it or do you want to take it or do you want to share it? I think, no disrespect to you, Annalise, but I think It's either going to be the chair or should stay. Yeah.

But, and it's just one person because it's a liaison.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We wouldn't want to confuse.

Yeah. Yeah. I'll, I can do. Yeah. I mean, if you feel that as the chair, that would be the natural. I think people are going to seek you by their hands. Yeah. There's no choice. You made that sound. Okay. Then negotiations. So this is to work with the school committee's attorney and superintendent during negotiations with collective bargaining units. Right now, that's me and Justin. We're just finishing up.

You want to give that up?

Well, there won't be any activity for three years.

I'm kidding. There will be one. The ESB contract? We need to stay on to continue. Yes. I was assuming we would both stay on that. As long as you guys don't object. Sounds great. Pretty far along.

Okay, then representative to the community services park and rec department to serve as a liaison between the school committee and CSPR. So Sean, you're on that.

I'm going to keep it whatever. I've started recent conversations with advocates and with programs around, you know, I'm on whatever it's going to be.

I'm happy to continue that learning. Yeah, that's great. We'll keep you on that. The budget subcommittee, we don't have a description on this one. So maybe you can speak to like a sentence or two, what happens on the budget subcommittee.

Sure. Budget subcommittee makes an entire presentation in March that details this. So the budget subcommittee, it's usually two members. It's a heavier lift. It involved meeting with the superintendent and business manager on a somewhat frequent basis. Planning takes course over the entire school year as we fine-tune the budget. There's often consultation with the town administrator's office, the select board, and the finance committee, and prepare the final budget, make the presentation to the school committee, get the school committee to vote on it, And then he goes off to town meeting and he'll have a pound of boats for it as well. Steve Mark is 20 for 20? What was the number? 20 for 20? 20 for 20. Yeah, I'm happy to stay. It's an interest of mine. I'm happy to stay on it. I know Sean had also expressed a lot of interest trying to jump on it last year and this year as well. Gina, I know you serve on it now. So...

Yeah. I mean, I think Sean stepping in is a great plan. Then more people, more people understand, more people know what's happening. Yeah.

I think that's what's going on the last couple of years. Yeah. And then ultimately if I, you know, totally step away, we've got two people. Yeah. That's a good plan. Right.

Yeah. This follows with your philosophy. Okay. The next one is safety and security. Um, Sean, you're currently on that. What is the gist of that?

Actually, I'll let Kevin speak to that a little bit.

We meet, depends on the year, usually every two months with our resource officers, often the deputy chief of the fire department and police department principals. And we take a look at safety in all of our schools. and review some of our response plans for various emergencies and anything else that we feel needs to be discussed. It's an opportunity to get an update from our resource officers as well in terms of the things that they're working on in our schools. It's a nice way to make sure that we're all moving in the same direction. I mean, as you all know, it's imperative that our safety plans at the forefront of every administrator's decision-making every single day. So this just formalizes the importance of it.

Okay.

It's not too much of a heavy list. Yeah.

Yeah. No, that would be great. It'd be great to... You're a report meeting once a year, or I get it in the fall. Okay. Yeah. Seems so long ago now. Okay. And then CPAC to serve as a liaison between the school committee and CPAC, including reporting on CPAC activities to the full committee. So I'm currently on that. I'm happy to stay on that. Hopefully in 10 more meetings this year.

I'd be willing to take that off of you since you are assuming quite a few responsibilities here.

That would be great. And you have a personal interest in that.

I have the inside scoop a little bit, yeah.

Okay. And then the master plan implementation, Janine, that's currently you. So we were talking about this a little earlier, Right now, there's not a lot happening with the master plan, but when there is, it would be good to have a liaison with the school committee. So it feels like it's a little bit in limbo at the moment, but it could heat up.

I mean, I've been part of the master plan a long time ago now as I'm thinking about planning. But there's also, anyone else interested in being that liaison? I will do it. And if anyone, can we switch these in the middle? We want to stay, but...

I mean, we can always bring it up for a vote again maybe here, right? If we wanted to switch members on a subcommittee. Yeah. So you're not speculating.

Well, I also like as people's interests rise and as people go, hey, this would be a, what's happening over there? You know, like come to the meeting. Yeah.

So we'll keep you on that for now. Yes. All right. So curriculum and instruction. So this was... One that I started when I first joined the school committee because it's a personal interest of mine. I've had a couple meetings with Beth Steele, very enjoyable meetings, talking about things that we both love to talk about. But it feels like it's in the similar category as the technology committee, where Beth presents to the school committee fairly frequently. I don't feel like we really need a liaison position on the school committee to be able to get that information. So as much as I love talking with you guys, I'm going to propose that we dissolve that one as well. So Kelly, if that's fine. It's not that I'm deprioritizing it. It's just that I don't think it's an appropriate subcommittee, given that things are so transparent. Now we have the Research and Data Analysis Subcommittee. So this is one that Fienel had started. Sean, you've expressed an interest in picking that up. Sean has proposed this description to use reliable sources such as DESE's database to help the committee make informed decisions. So do you feel like that's, would you like a second person on that subcommittee with you or do you feel like it's a one person job? I'm happy to do whatever you want.

Thank you. I don't know. That one seems like maybe you would want a second person, right? Collaborators or ideas around.

Yeah. That second person would be perfect.

Yeah. That definitely sounds like, yeah, that would be a good team for a good job. OK, we're almost done. So the communications subcommittee, this was something that Sean had started in the last year, but it never had made it onto the list. So we're going to give it a description now. So Sean, you had proposed that the purpose of this subcommittee is to build trust through timely communication, which benefits the community as it pertains to the school district.

Yeah, actually, I'm curious what would be my table discussion on changing that definition just until the beginning of the school year, so you can kind of flesh that out. Maybe a sparingly treat, but we can kind of flesh that out.

OK. So the current assignment is Sean and Justin. So do you want to stay on that?

Yeah, I'm happy to stay on that.

This was John's brainchild. He's done a lot of the heavy lifting. I think there's quite a few pieces of communication out there, which is awesome. Your ability to communicate to the community has been fantastic. I hear what you're saying in terms of tabling it. We're going to have a change in leadership. With the change in leadership, we can report back to the school committee. We think the communications subcommittee is more to inform the community. of what's happening at the school committee level? Is it the committee's opinion of what's happening at the district level? Are we advising or guiding central office on what the communication should be? So I think we need to kind of flesh that out with the new leadership. But for now, I'm happy to stay on and support you all.

Okay. Sounds good. And... Annalise has one that she'd like to propose.

Yes. So the Sustainability Subcommittee. To serve as a liaison between the School Committee and the Littleton Sustainability Committee, explores and recommends sustainability initiatives to support the town's climate action plan.

Especially given the building we do and the changes we make. Yeah. The fields.

Yeah, you know.

I think that would be a great idea. Yeah.

They're going to be here anyways?

I would like it to be. If somebody else wants to join me, that's fine too.

So right now it's kind of a liaison position between, because you've been going to the meetings of the sustainability committee.

I've been keeping track of what they've been up to. They meet at the same time we do. That's the only tricky part.

But their meetings are recorded?

Some of them are, but not. Yeah. So it's more about keeping tabs on what they've been working on and speaking with their chair.

Yeah, because it could have implications with our school buildings. Right. Right. Yeah. OK. All right. So we have a slate. Do you, so we should make a motion and vote to accept this full slate of subcommittee appointments. Do you want me to bring them all out or?

Can we just say, I move to accept the, as presented, the slate of subcommittee assignments as presented.

I will second that.

Okay, all in favor?

Aye. Any opposed? Aye. Great, series. Thank you for going through that with me. It's good to have that updated. Okay, so now we're getting to the consent agenda, which consists of the minutes from the May 14th, 2026 bill committee meeting and the oath to bills in payroll. So I just need a motion to accept the consent agenda.

I move to accept the consent agenda.

into the minutes from the may 14 2026 meeting as well as those payroll second all in favor aye aye any opposed no okay that carries okay so we have our first opportunity for interested citizens um is there anyone either present or online that wishes to speak there's nobody online nobody in line no one here OK, and next up on the agenda is the recognition portion of the agenda. But I see Cod was not here today. So Ellie, do you want to give a report from the superintendent?

If you wouldn't mind, I'll just do a quick update, maybe ask the principals to highlight two or three things. This time of year is so busy in our schools that I want to make sure that we get some key information out there because before you know it, it's going to be June 18th. I'll start off with recognizing all the hard work that went into the Special Olympics that we held last week. Kudos to Mrs. Desolette for all the hard work. It's unbelievable how much work goes into something like that. We had... Five different districts participate in the event. It was a great day. Weather was good. We hired a DJ that kept the kids dancing and moving all day long. And one of my favorite activities to attend every year. So thank you to all the staff and students who came out to volunteer. All the Rotary Clubs in those five different areas for donating money certainly helped. for us to even set a new bar for what Special Olympics should look like moving forward. And my wish is that that day continues on for many more years. Other than that, we all know that graduation is coming up June 5th at 5.30 PM. We'll get to celebrate our class of 2026, which is always really special. And tonight we have an awards ceremony going on at the high school. That's why our students couldn't be here this evening. And I'm going to turn it over to Keith. Do you have anything else? Sure. For the high school? Sure.

Good evening. Yeah, so as Kelly mentioned, tonight is our senior send-off at the high school and our senior award ceremony. It's a really great event to celebrate the culmination of the seniors' time here at the public schools. Tomorrow is our senior parade. They started school at the breakfast, and they parade around the town in their cars by all the other schools, the Sacred Lane School and then Middle School and Russell Street School and coming back to the high school at the end, and they do their final countdown. Monday is their senior trip to go to Martha's Vineyard, which is a nice event for the seniors to get together one last time before they head off on their own next journeys. And then, as Kelly mentioned, Friday is graduation. What else? What else? We have what we have. Obviously, we're finishing up the school year. We finished our senior final exam. We had the MCAS last week. We had the MCAS come up next week for the ninth graders in science. And our underclassmen final exams are coming up and starting on the 12th. So the last four or five days of the year for the underclassmen is their final exams. And so we're really trying to try to wrap things up and finish strong.

Thank you.

Jason.

Yeah, we finished the final MCAS test of the year. For our eighth graders, it's a lot. They have civics, science, math, ELA, plus map testing. And then this year, they were a part. We were selected to do alternate testing as well before all that. So our current eighth graders had quite a slate of testing. So today was the last and final day. We celebrated with some snow cones outside afterwards. And I think you could just feel the relief. We're seeing a real strong finish to the end of the year. Our promotion ceremony will be on Wednesday the 16th and followed by the trip to New Hampshire on the 17th and then the final day. We have a Golden Tiger Awards that we're going to do on the final day as an assembly to sort of honor everybody who's done a great job this year. So we've got some good things coming up. So we finally passed all of that and we get to really enjoy the next three weeks. Thank you. Thank you. Colin? I've written my calendar. You didn't have to do it.

We are also wrapped up with NCAS, but still finishing up our end-of-year benchmark testing. Looking at next week, Monday we have our spring chorus and band concert in the afternoon. Fifth graders go to their field trip in Cedarland on Wednesday. Our third and fourth graders have field day on the third on that day. Our fifth graders head over to the middle school next Friday the 5th to check out their new days. Then fifth graders head over to the library the following week. We're welcoming second graders from Shaker Lane up to Russell Street on the 10th. Fifth graders have field day on the 12th, which brings us to the last week of school where we are welcoming high-tech, high-touch for all of our third grade students. Shark Tank projects for our fifth graders and a fifth grade clap off on the final day of school. I know I missed other stuff, but there's a lot going on.

There's a lot. Everything that's going on.

This is actually a big week for us. While everybody's closing up the air, we're gearing up. We have kindergarten registration this week. I'm sorry, we have kindergarten screening this week. We had kindergarten ambassador tours on Tuesday night where we invited kindergarten families to come in, tour the building, see what it's like, ask questions of current kindergarten families. We had one parent volunteer to help Rebecca and I tour. So that is like... I love that we're winding down, but at Shaper Lane, we're winding down. We'll also be preparing for next year. So we also have field day coming up. We have book swap next week. We have kindergarten zoo trip next week. We have pre-K graduation coming up. We have move-up day going to Russell Street. Water day. Lots of stuff going on between now and the end of the year. So it's fun. It's fun packed. And we'll get there. I believe someone said like 15 days left of school. Yeah.

That wasn't me.

All I'm thinking of is scheduling all those buses for field trips. So that's like a job in itself. It is. Very exciting. Thank you very much. OK, so we have several presentations on the agenda tonight.

Elaine, if you wouldn't mind, could we do the CPAC annual update first?

Absolutely. So we'll move that up from the second place to the first place. So this is the CPAC annual update. So members of the CPAC leadership team will give an update on the CPAC events for the 2025-2026 school year and plans for the coming school year.

We have a slideshow in the packet.

That will be the second set of slides. Just a little silence.

Give me a second.

Thank you for coming. Yes.

It's right after the. I'm sorry. I don't know if you got one last year.

Music in the wind.

Both of them.

All right.

One second. Sorry. Good, man.

Good, man. Yeah.

So we're here tonight just to give you a quick overview of what we accomplished this year and some ideas we have for next year. Next slide. So just if anyone is not aware, CPAC is the Special Education Parent Advisory Council, and we work with the district and parents just to kind of bring everybody together and make an environment where all students are able to contribute and have the same opportunities. Next slide, please. So we wanted to start off with a new little project we did this year for staff appreciation. The CPAC sent out an email to all the families we have in our group. and we gave them the opportunity to share appreciation for a staff member who works with their special needs child. So it was a Google form, really simple, and we had an excellent response. We got 25 families who responded, eight, Shaker Lane, nine, Russell Street, six from the middle school, two from the high school, and then we shared the responses with the staff member and the administrators. And I did a little analysis of all the responses. I gave you some examples on the board. But I did a little analysis. And the most commonly used words were supportive, team, collaborative, progress, success, growth, caring, and kindness. So excellent words that we like to hear in the special education field. Parents are incredibly grateful for the individualized support and care that teachers are providing in our schools. And they're seeing a lot of progress in their children. So we were thrilled. So some really nice comments.

So the next slide. This slide is an overview of what our calendar looked like this year. And I'll just explain a couple of the meetings. We started with just a meeting, leadership meeting, and looking at IEPs if people had questions. And then the next one in October, we had a local mom who's a coach, and she wanted to kind of offer parent support in helping parents build resilience, especially in this special ed parents. And that was really helpful, a lot of mindfulness skills And then in November, we were offered to have someone from the, what is it, Board of Special Ed Appeals speak about the mediation process. So she did a, I think that was virtual, virtual orientation, and they're doing that across the state. orientation on what mediation is. But that was very interesting. December, we just offered a social, and then in January, we also had another former Littleton parent who has experience in this. She did a presentation on transitioning, Jen Stack, sorry, she did a presentation on the transition from high school to college with kids with disabilities. So that was, again, really interesting and not an area we get to hear a lot from, so. And then I think, yeah, the 25th in March was just the, yeah, the massive, the workshop. Well, we don't really have to adopt one anymore. We don't have to run one anymore, but we did kind of adopt the Federation workshop and we chose this one on evaluation and eligibility. And then in April, we offered a book club program book autism out loud, which was really well received. And then, yeah, we have a meeting next week where we're going to hold elections. Hopefully. I don't know. Um, and yeah, I think that the, and then the next one was just, we haven't sat down formally on ideas for next year. Um, but we threw together some, and one idea was to have a, you know, um, program, you know, on transition, um, Maybe something in mental health. Yes.

And we're working on transitioning from the middle school to the high school. That seems to be a big gap for parents. So we're trying to work on some different things.

There's like I worked on some FAQs.

Yes. Actually, I was thinking it would be nice to do like what they do for the kindergarten parents, but for the high school parent shows around the freshman parents.

But we're working on So, and then, yeah, then some other ideas throughout their system technology and also kind of going back to work with Parks and Rec, which we did a couple of years ago and trying to get them back at the table. That'd be great. So, anything?

You guys got questions? Yeah.

I just want to say, Authors Not Alive is a great book. Yes. You guys did that.

Yeah, it was awesome. Yeah, it was. Yeah.

And it really touches like, you know, for any family with special needs like that.

Yeah. I wanted to thank you for being on the subcommittee that we had to meet. Yeah, that's right.

And thanks for letting us have a role there.

It's great. Absolutely. I'll see Allison.

Yeah.

Well, I want to really commend you for how active the group has been this year. And, you know, I know last year was your sort of redevelopment year, trying to put CPAC back together again. And you finally had elections for board members. And you've really hit the ground running. Like, these are really interesting, solid topics. And I hope that your membership has been growing consistently. It's a little bit short.

We're still experimenting virtual, in person, what works better for times.

It's always tricky because parents are busy people, but you're offering such a wonderful opportunity for collaboration and supporting each other through what's not always an easy journey when you've got a student with disabilities in your family. I did have another idea that came to mind. We talk so much about UDL as a district priority, and there's big implications for students with disabilities. So I don't know if that's an opportunity for a future meeting idea to learn more about how UDL strategies can be applied. Yeah, for students that are on IEP.

Yeah, definitely, yeah.

I think that's super interesting.

Yeah, yeah. And the assistive technology could be in that, too. Yep. So, yeah. Definitely.

It was great. The people we did have were all kind of community members, so we were able to tap into local resources for these workshops, so that was really nice, too. Yeah.

Well, thank you for all of your work supporting our parents. Yeah, thank you to do it.

Yeah.

Okay, so we can go back now to the update on the school improvement plans. So School administrators will focus on the two major goals for the 25, 26 school year. So yeah, I looked back to, I was looking at these slides and they looked familiar. I was like, where did I see this before? So it was back on October 9th. The principals came to us with their school improvement plan goals for the year. And that was at that time that they were aligned to the strategic plan. So we heard more about the goals. So now we're going in here.

So our first goal was to enhance the ability to recognize and relay a message behind students who are experiencing behaviors, could be anxiety or whatever behaviors. And one of the things we did this year was the action steps is we redid our reflection sheet. So our reflection sheet was what didn't you focus on and what? And we worked so hard on how to show heart. It was kind of like, well, how are you breaking it down? Does it make sense to us? So we revamped that this year and made it a visual. I believe at some point, I think it was when we did the portrait of a learner, we did some updates too. So I think I shared that visual with you guys. So our thing sheet is really about, there are a lot of visuals. We talk about the zones of regulation, brain zone, how are you feeling? How do you think the other person felt? How can we make this right? What happened? And it's such a, It was such a great visual process where before it was, how are you not honest? How did you not show effort? How did you not take responsibility? So this felt more primary for us. So the interesting part, I'm going to jump over to the indicators of success. I looked at the amount of think sheets we had this year and reflection sheets we had last year. In addition to some supports, we've been a place to help the kids. And we had, I think, one more sheet this year than last year, which I guess is okay. We're kind of working at the same level, but it really would be great to get them down more. So I think creating the sheet, using the sheet. The second thing we have in there is our response team meetings. Every other Thursday, we meet with our response team. So myself, the assistant principal, the school adjustment counselor, the school psychologist, Allie Gilman, our special education administrator, and our RBT. And we look at who are the calls that we are, which is the next one as well. Who are we responding most to a call? Who needs the support the most? What do we put in place? And when we track our response call log, we're really looking on how did we get the kid back on track? Yes, we're looking at what were the behaviors, but how did we get the kid back on track? How can we emulate that again? What can we bring to another student? So every other Thursday we meet, we talk about, we usually call them our tier two, tier three kids that are really having a challenging time expressing their behavior, expressing their behavior in just a maladaptive way. We're really trying to shape that into communication. I'm angry. I need a break. Whether it's holding up a card, using those words, a signal with the teacher, So we put that in place this year. I feel good about it. When I analyzed the response call log, it was great to see at the beginning of the year, not great at the beginning of the year, but now it is, a number of children responding to. And now at the end of the year, we're treating it down to maybe two or three kids, as opposed to maybe like six, seven kids at the beginning of the year. So really looking at, you know, the children are growing, we're growing, we're putting the supports in place for them. Just really putting all our heads together and documenting this so we can have this resource. So indicators of success, it's a shared document we have for the response meeting so we can go back to it as a response team and look at what is working for our kids. And we have seen a reduction in response calls for the students because we're really looking at, again, not the behavior, how do we get this child back on track?

So that was our first goal.

And our second goal, I'm going to let you read it. And while you read it, I'm going to tell you, it kind of tweaks a little bit because we were looking at the Witten Wisdom Program and we're trying to say, how is that rooted in the five pillars of reading? And as we got into it and we started to look at our PD this year and what we wanted to do, the action steps weren't really focused more on the goal. It was how are we supporting the Witten Wisdom program? How are we building the scaffolds? So, you know, we realized that, you know, our pillars of reading, the phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency comprehension, pieces of that are in Witten Wisdom, but a lot of that comes from our foundations program. It comes from our Hegarty program, our phonemic awareness program. So we felt like we had that solid and we really just focused on

How do we support our Witten Wisdom program?

So we partnered with Lesley University this year. And that was really good. On the right-hand side, you'll see a couple of things that came out of that. Each person that we partnered with, she really asked the teams, K1 and 2, what did they want to focus on? Kindergarten, they wanted to align. their lessons very closely with the wit and wisdom program because they have like target pieces that they have to teach like a must teach and then there's other things that are repetitive repetitive repetitive and while some classes needed that other classes didn't didn't so they really sat together to say okay what are our i'm losing the word what are our required tasks i think it was and those have to be done but then how many of those are repeated in the lesson and if my class is solid But, you know, my partner's class isn't solid.

They're going to need the reteaching, but we can shave that down and then focus on other things.

So the kindergarten team worked closely to look at lessons and really pare them down to things that were more manageable for the students in front of them. We also, with Leslie University, we scaffolded some focus question tasks, which come at the end of every arc that the kids are studying. And they came up with a few, you know, Elaine, you mentioned UDL. So the focus questioning task is usually a written component of what they learned. And when you look at them, I mean, I'm making this up, but maybe there's like six or seven in one module that focus on the final module and a module task assessment. But out of those five or six FQTs, the teachers are like, can we do something a little different? Does it have to be a writing task? If we're getting those writing components in the other FQTs, can we make one of them a little different? So some of the ideas that they came up with this year was they only changed like one or two per module. So comic strips to tell a story. So the kids would draw out a comic strip, and then they would retell the story. So the prompt is still the same, but now they're putting it in a visual display. A poster. that explains the task of the focus question, a foldable where it's just kind of like you have maybe the beginning, the middle, the end, and then making an actual book, like a written book of the story. So those are some of the ways that gave children a little bit more autonomy on how to express what they know, as opposed to just the written task of the focus questioning task. We also spent some time in our staff meetings. with Julie Lord and our staff that are getting really savvy with Gemini on creating gems in Gemini, which was a learning process for us. So a gem is something that Gemini, which is our district's, what's the word I'm looking for? Thank you. Our district's AI format, similar to ChatGPT. So when you create a gem, it holds it there, and then you can hold a gem. So create a lesson for me that is, or take this lesson and give me some scaffolded support so students have difficulty with comprehension. So that gem will stay there, and then the teacher can link the lesson and get some scaffolded ideas to help students to have comprehension challenges. So we spent some time with staff on that and just really took some dedicated team time and grade level time to go over this, let them feel comfortable, experiment, talk with their teams. And we've made some good headway with that. And really using and seeing Gemini as a task to make things, you know, working smarter, not harder for them.

Any questions for Michelle?

I love the way that you're using technology to answer the question today.

I'm trying to go last now. But, you know, I always have questions. So I'm I was so happy to back up to your previous goal. So happy to read that you're focusing on recognizing the underlying messages behind student behaviors because, you know, they are they are. Telling us something like no, no child is bad. You know, they're trying to tell you something with your behavior. And I love that that's being recognized in a goal and that you're teaching kids to explicitly name their emotions. That's just so important. I'm really glad that you were finding success with that. So the response call log, is that like when a classroom teacher reaches out for extra support because someone's dysregulated and you're tracking the responses?

So we might get a call from Michelle King because she's just under the table and it's been 20 minutes, 30, trying to coax her out. And so there's only five of us that really have access to, there's five of us that have access to that log and there's like four of us that respond to calls, myself, the assistant principal, school adjustment counselor, the school psychologist, and our RBT. She's usually our first person to call.

Well, you know, thank you for that, that word and that positive message too. I think that's really great for building climate in school. Um, and I, I'm also so happy to hear that you're, um, with your wisdom implementation, that you're at the point where you can really start looking at it and how to make it work best for your students. So you're no longer, you know, in that phase where you're just trying to do it the way it's written. And now you're thinking of, um, you know, making it your own and, um, adapting it for the needs of students. So that's really exciting to hear.

Yeah, I think they were ready this year. Yeah. Last year, I think they wanted to change things, but they probably didn't know how to change it because it was all so new.

Yeah.

So I think getting a year under their belt sounds good.

Congratulations on some great goals. Thank you. Thank you so much.

And Colin from the Russell Street School.

Hello, everyone. Fortunately for Russell Street, a lot of the action steps and indicators of success are things that I've already presented to the school committee because we've talked about portion of a learner or UDL. A lot of that ties into the goals that Russell Street was already working on, but I'm happy to kind of put a cap on it for this year for Russell Street. So our first goal was to create multiple opportunities for students to share their voice. take the lead on many of our Stripe initiatives and our Stripe assemblies because we want them to own what it means to have and show Stripe. Elaine, I think back to when I presented in October and you asked me, what is success going to look like? How are we going to measure whether that goal has been successful? And I think at the time I said to you, well, when we have assemblies, if the microphone is in the students' hands more than it's in the adults' hands, I think that we'll be on the right track. And I'm happy to say that that is certainly how it happened this year. We have a strike team of teachers who meet monthly to plan these activities and plan these events. And on every agenda when we're talking about it, we're always coming back to how can we make sure that students are more involved in this process and they're taking the lead and having the ownership over what it means to show Stripe at Russell Street. So just a few of the indicators of success. I've got their Tiger Talk newscast, which was a neat idea for one of our Stripe assemblies. I think it was the Taking Responsibility Assembly. And we put together groups of students who had earned the Taking Responsibility Stripe. And we had some fifth graders serve as the anchors of this newscast. And they had special correspondence that were scattered throughout the different buildings. We brought the whole school into the cafeteria and we had a news broadcast that was really a Google Meet where the kids made that news broadcast. And then now we'll go over to the recess yard where so-and-so is going to tell us about what it means to take responsibility at recess. And okay, let's head over to the hallway and go to Charlie who's in the nook to talk about what it means to take responsibility in the hallway. a really student-centered approach for that. We had a winter band concert for the first time for our students. So shortly after the all-district winter band concert, we invited our fifth graders to perform for their peers for our Perseverance Strike Assembly because those fifth graders have really persevered to learn an instrument for the first time. We continued on with our student-nominated stripe awards. So typically students earn stripes from their teachers, but starting last year and carried over into this year, their classmates can nominate other peers to earn a stripe when they've recognized a peer that's been doing, you know, showing the expectations of the school. It was fresh in my mind when I made this last week. Our fifth graders completely led a Memorial Day assembly where they taught their classmates and their peers all about the history of Memorial Day, the significance of the poppy, all about our different armed forces. And I'll tell you that I think our students were more respectful toward our fifth graders when they were presenting than sometimes when their principal has the microphone. We've had a group of third grade students who have made Russell Street News when they have a wind block and they hand deliver me a new edition of the Russell Street News about what's going on in school. And we've been able to eliminate those and put them in Chilville for any students that are taking a break and they want to flip through the different news articles that third graders have written. And then our Spectrum of Sound program that we brought in that was also at the high school, all of the introductions and all of the explanations and all of the things to welcome that wonderful group into our school was done by our own students. So just lots of great student voice happening at Russell Street, and I'm really happy to keep that going because when our students have control over, you know, what the expectations are and where we want to be as a school. It certainly holds a lot more weight when it's coming from the third, fourth, and fifth graders. Our second goal is similar to Michelle's around wit and wisdom and our continued implementation. This year folding in Universal Design for Learning into that year two of implementation. I've mentioned a lot of this before when we presented on UDL, but I'll just quickly talk about the At the beginning of the year, all of our teams did a look-fors self-assessment when it comes to UDL and their own practice to kind of start us off and kind of thinking about where we currently are and where we want to go. I've spoken about that UDL Padlet where we looked at some of the more common wisdom types of lessons. And we've kept that Padlet going throughout the year where teachers can continue to drop new ideas that they've tried in their classrooms for something that comes up again and again, like a turn and talk or a Socratic seminar and the different ways in which our teachers are now approaching that task while maintaining the same objective, but just reaching out their students in different ways. We have also used AI in some of our professional development and a few of us at Russell Street went to an AI summit where we brought back lots of great ideas for new ways to prompt Gemini or ChatGPT to get the good stuff that is going to be really helpful for our teachers without having to kind of go through lots of different types of promptings where it's not going to be giving you what you want. There's some really great workshops on how to prompt appropriately for teachers specifically to get what they want. We also partnered with Lesley University and had a consultant that worked with us throughout the year. I think one of the biggest indicators for success was that last bullet point in the bottom right. The last time that our consultant was here, I had asked her to meet with all of our teaching teams and then try to get to as many classrooms as possible during their Witten Wisdom block. And she was able to do that. And then we had some time at the end of the day to debrief and she could share her notes with me because she was kind of doing it on her own because I didn't want anything to influence what teachers were doing in their classroom. And the first thing she said to me when she sat down was, students have a lot of choices in how they're interacting with Witten Wisdom. We're doing it. Okay. That's great to hear. So I was really happy and proud of our teachers for really taking that on. Year two of implementation is a different type of beast than year one was, but equally difficult and challenging. But I think it's... our teachers are starting to see where they can find their own voice in this curricular program, where they need to make those tweaks based on the students in front of them. And I think for year three, right, we're just going to continue that work on and maybe find the things that the program itself is lacking or missing so we can then fill the gaps in there. So excited for the next steps. All right. Thank you.

I think the newscast, I mean, it's not.

That's so cool. Yeah, it's really fun. I have a photo of Ms. Romano was out with the student holding up a laptop outside in the cold, like holding up the Google Meet so the student could, like, do her newscast. And Ms. Romano just standing there in the cold, you know, letting the student run the show. So it's fun. Yeah, awesome.

And then Memorial Day Assembly, like, what a great idea, having the student.

Yeah, that was all the fifth grade team. The kids did a really nice job. Yeah.

So did the Lesley University liaison bring anything anything to work on in the future?

Yeah, so the first time that she came and worked with our teachers, she had a really good process and protocol for how to look at a Witten Wisdom lesson and make those adjustments based on what was needed in a particular class. So it was a good way and a different way than teachers had initially learned from our first year of implementation on kind of dissecting a lesson plan, but through the lens of what might I need to adjust to make it make sense for my classroom with the students that i have in front of me so the teachers kind of learned that and then she stuck around to help them through that process and protocol and they continue to use it um for the rest of the modules a new set of eyes yeah nice thank you

Well, I just want to celebrate your progress with these great goals. I do remember asking you in October, what's success going to look like? And I think, you know, with your first goal, so much of it is building school culture and your indicators of success really speak to that. you know, the students are starting to feel like Russell Street School is their school, you know, that they're not doing it for you, they're doing it for themselves. And that's just so exciting to hear. And with wit and wisdom, you know, like at Shaper Lane, you know, how exciting to be in this year of implementation where teachers can start to feel like they can make the adjustments that they, as the brilliant professionals that they are, they are going to make it work for their students in front of them. So it's Now the fun part starts, right? Yeah. So congratulations on your success. Thank you. Okay, Jason for the middle school.

Thank you. So the first one we looked at was really trying to take UDL from theory, concept, and really trying to apply it. But moving it to something a little bit more than just choice boards and certain work. And so one of the goals that I had challenged staff with was really to bring in the concept of a student-led, student-generated project. It sounds simple and it sounds like something we already always do, but it's hard to let go of that control where you're just turning it over to the student and letting them sort of guide themselves. And so while we do plenty of project work, this takes on a little bit of a different meaning. So really we started working with early adopters to people that really wanted to get in and see it first. Because, you know, for some who have been teaching a long time or for some who haven't seen this play out, you know, it might not be as easy to just accept that and roll with it. So the idea was if we can get somebody on each team to try it out, right, see how it works and then be able to then, you know, uh, you know, hopefully encourage their teammates in the same. And so we did have some of those early adopters and some of them went really well. You know, others were, you know, could be clunky because it's, it's a process. And what we really want to do is we really want to break it down into its spot. So we're just not just saying, Hey kid, here's a project. You pick what you want to do. I'll see you, you know, in two weeks, but we really want to be able to provide total freedom yet with the guardrails that make this thing end up where it's supposed to. And so that's one of the goals in the next school improvement plan is to really take that to the next level and how do we really start to think backwards about what that looks like and how do we implement that. So I'm excited to see where this goes. In terms of the second goal, one of the things that we really set out to do a couple of years ago was Find ways, new ways to connect with families in our community. Middle school parents just don't often have opportunities to really get together. We see that more in the elementary and, you know, sports and other things that the high school bring that. The middle school, you know, so many of the kids don't want their parents around. And we don't do, you know, like, you know, room parents and those kind of things. So we just, we lack that. And so one of the concepts that came up from a school council meeting was, you know, we have parents who are new to Littleton. Right. And who are new to the middle school. They don't know anybody else. They didn't grow up here. They're not from a certain neighborhood, but they're finding it hard to crack into sort of the little town culture. And so we thought, well, this would be a perfect opportunity to bring some people in and get them to be a part of the middle school. So we partnered with the PTA and we hosted our first LMS trivia night. And it was done at the Kraft Beer Halls or Kraft Food Halls down in Boxborough. And it was awesome. Like, we probably had, like, two dozen families show up. Kids were there. Like, it was a great trivia night. We did, like, are you smarter than a sixth grader? And, you know, the middle school principal is very competitive. He did not like losing to seventh graders. But we, you know, were part of teams. And it was just a lot of fun. It was great for me because... you know, so many times when you're talking to parents or students, it's, it's academic. This was, this took the rails off of that. And we had families show up who didn't really know anybody else and they were part of other teams and other groups. And so I left there feeling, you know, really, really jazzed about, about that. And so that's something that we're going to continue to do next year and hopefully build it up even more. So thank you to our PTA for, for, for taking that on. They did a great job. And I think it's just, it was just one of those nights that doesn't happen very often. And so if we can recreate that every year and try to provide, some of our newer families opportunities to be with somebody that their kids did grow up playing soccer with, this would be a good opportunity. So that's kind of where we're at.

That's great. Yeah, I talked a little bit to Juliana a little bit about the event. It's great. And she's awesome. You guys have a traditional event in the fall. Yep. Are you behind tickets? Yeah. Okay. If not, she's going to be calling. Oh, but I love trying to pull community in. Yeah. It's a small town. Maybe you really shows up and it's great to get your truck full.

And I do. And I have, I've said this. here before, but I really do feel like the middle school in any town should really be the hub for so much of this happens because it just traditionally does lack those things. And so we're working overtime to truly try and make this something that it's a place that families want to be a part of and want to connect with. Thank you.

Yeah, great. I'm curious with the UDL assessments, the student-led assessments, do you find that they're harder on themselves than the teachers would be or easier on themselves than the teachers would be? Or since it's not falling into a pattern?

It's hard to say. They become incredibly creative, the kids, in what they do. One of the things that we're really going to build into the goal for the next SIP is executive functioning and reflection. Because while the kids did everything that they were supposed to do, it's something that I felt like we didn't do a big enough job of. It's really bringing that back. And it's hard to get 11-year-olds to really think critically about their work. And what we want to do is, we don't want it to be just like, oh, hey, it could have been better. It could have looked like this. But really, we want to talk about the process, right? We want to talk about, you know, were those in what they're doing. And also embedding some executive functioning skills, time management, materials management, you know, these kind of things so that you don't end up with, because you're always going to have the kids who get it done early and it's awesome. And then you're always going to have the kids that are doing last minute. So I think. It shows an area of need that if we're going to go in this direction with these student-led projects, we've got to support our students with those basic skills that they need to be able to do that. I think it's too much to ask them to do this without giving them those skills. So that's going to be a real focus of what we do look forward. How do we teach executive functioning? and how we embed it into what we're doing so that they're developing those skills. That's what we're doing.

Sounds like great UDL strategies, you know, offering it to some, but it's good for all. Yeah, yeah.

And so we'll see. I'm excited about where this will go.

Yeah. Thanks for your innovation. All right. Thank you. That's great.

Thank you. Thank you.

Okay. And Keith, come on up for the high school.

Before I get into the update here, I have to mention the financial literacy fair that we had last week as a community event. It's something that we've had the past couple of years, and it's a great event for our seniors to experience some of the reality checking in a lot of ways of what life will look like once they get out of high school. A lot of community volunteers, Hannah Baden, Maddie Smith, those are teachers that kind of ran it for us. I know I saw Sean there, I was there, It's a great event to expose kids to those real-world things. I didn't mention it in my update before, and I felt I had to as part of the update for the school committee about recent events at the high school. And hearing from Jason about his community event really sparked in my mind. I have to mention this again.

Did they make a video again like they did last year?

They should have had a video, but it was an enhanced event this year. They had music playing the entire time. It was much more like fun events. kind of atmosphere than they have in the past. There's all the different community tables around with all the different, the same, I guess, necessary components, but it was a lot more fun. They had the raffles for kids to win prizes, and it's a really fun event, number one, but also a very important event for kids to learn some of these realities before again yeah it was great um so going back to our goals um the the first of our goals really tied into the developing methods of assessment for what proficiency looks like with our portfolio of learning and how it was really tied into our niasc visit which happened um a couple weeks ago at this point and obviously the first step of that was updating what we had started the high school as a vision of a graduate and transitioning that to the portfolio of with the whole district as part of a more streamlined process from grade pre-K to 12 in terms of the Port River Learner. There was a presentation in February to the school committee about our progress in the Port River Learner in particular. Some of the activities that we did this year is that we spent a lot of building-based PD on really developing that roadmap activities and identifying the learning opportunities in each course. shared document that all teachers contributed to for all the courses and the kids have access to those documents as well as they look at reflecting on their progress in the different competency areas there's you know memory joggers of oh this is what I did in you know my English class this year or my math class this year or whatever it is and they can use those to develop their evidence and put it to their portfolios for their own individual Portrait of a Learner digital portfolios. So the formal process for assessing student progress is underway. We did, you know, roll it out this year and we had students, you know, compile evidence for two of the conferencing areas. They could kind of pick which two they want to this year, which just for grades nine, 10, 11, we've exempted grade 12 for this year, just because, you know, they're already seniors when we started this process. So we exempted them this year, but grades nine, 10, 11, you know, did, participate this year in the reflective process of identifying their key learning opportunities and how they've grown as a learner in two of the six competency areas. So there was this tiered role of the student reflection of their skills and their advisories. And the indication of success, obviously we did host the MEAS visit from May 3rd to 6th. It was a very successful visit and they were very happy with our progress. and from what they reported to us at the conclusion of our visit, the product in all of our priority areas, one of which was developing a way of assessing the Portugal learner. Again, we've had students compiling evidence in their digital portfolios, and grades nine and 11 did actually present during their advisories this year. So every student had the opportunity to present to their peers in their advisories for now, of their progress in those two competency areas. So for next year, we'll continue with the work and add more of the areas to each student's portfolio, number one, but also their presentation at the end of the year, as we continue to develop, you know, a more clear picture of what this process looks like. You know, we did a lot of work, you know, over the past year and a half or so with NEASC in particular, with John Clements and Mary Moran from Nipmuc, and their process with the portable learner. I know the whole leadership team had a PD with them. Our high school team, we met with them twice separately from that district-wide thing. really explain how their process would really hit a roof in nature. And then we're seeing the same thing with our own. So as we continue through the next couple of years, we'll really finalize how we want to have students portray their successes in the portfolio of a learner in their digital portfolio. So a successful first year of implementation. We've had some successes in terms of the student presentations in their portfolios. The second big goal really focused on the MTSS process at the high school and really refining how we were doing things. So we spent a lot of time this year in a variety of activities. You know, the SST members attended workshops with MSAA, focusing on effective practices around the MTSS process, the SST protocol, et cetera. School counselors participated in PD round-tiered supports. We recently went through the district-wide integrated monitoring review through DESE, which I think will hear a little bit more from Lynn. Shortly about that. So we worked with that and looking at our, our processes and our tracking of student data in terms of our interventions and the, you know, the data tracking process through there. We just last week had a updated MTSS SST presentation to our staff as part of the actually it's Friday on the half day during our PD. And then by next month, we'll have a revised SST manual to get to the staff as we roll out into next year. So again, the indicator of success is that we do have a newly updated process through which we get teacher referrals for students through SST, how we implement strategies to help support students and track that progress through SST. more consistent documentation. We did improve collaboration this year with SST with our academic support center and really using the academic support center as a way to provide more structured peer intervention. track progress and communicate more effectively between the ASC and the SST and the classroom teachers and families as well. You know, the teacher or the ASC does a lot of weekly or biweekly updates with parents about progress in the ASC in, you know, a variety of areas, obviously. And as we move forward, we're, again, going to be increasing the emphasis with our SST on, you know, the documentation of interventions and progress monitoring of those interventions over time. focus of the district over the past couple of years. So keeping our eyes on those numbers as well as the academic progress, grades, behavior, social emotional support, all the different arms of the MTSS process.

Go ahead. Yeah, just wanted to say, again, the financial literacy fair was great. That was awesome. And I love seeing, I know Steve Mark was there. He was helping Manning and Booth. I know there was like a local realtor that was doing it. I love how the community is kind of getting involved with that. It's awesome. like just the last time you presented, or superlative, imagine how great it is that this Portugal learner will kind of like help as kids interview for things. They kind of present themselves to the world and a really awesome thing is the world's kind of changing and you absolutely have to figure out who you are pretty quickly.

Yeah, I mean, you know, the self-reflection that's required in this Portugal learner portfolio stuff is really going to, like you said, help students identify their learning styles, their strengths, their interests, and all those things. I was talking to a parent today about like, post high school planning. And they're saying how, you know, the kid doesn't really know what they want to do and, you know, where they want to go, whether it's a two year school, four year school, going to the workforce or whatever. And, you know, looking at the next year and a half of this kid, it's going to be really instructive of like what the next steps look like and how, what they want to do for post high school. So it's great. It's great.

Is each student required to be able to stand up and present? And so we're working on those?

Yeah, each student is required to do the portfolio and the presentation. As of right now, we are just doing the advisory, so it's a much smaller group. And so they're in front of the peers that they're with for the entirety of the year, in some cases four years, and with the same teacher. And obviously, if there are some students that have some trepidation about that. We work with that. And the individual advising teacher has some latitude of how the presentations actually roll out. But every student at this point, 9, 10, 11, is required to do it.

Like Sean said, that's such an important life skill.

Absolutely.

but my questions are kind of related. I remember the February meeting, we were all so excited about Portugal Learner, and we were talking about it, like, you know, in theory, and then tonight you shared the example of students presenting to their advisors, so it made me sort of think through the operational aspect of this, and just correct me if I'm wrong, like, the seniors really didn't have any requirement this year, because they had lending. And we're going to sort of phase this in, so my understanding was that it's like the current freshmen Full-blown portfolio by the time they're seniors, I think was my understanding. And then it was, Janine, I was exactly thinking what you were thinking, which is what's the requirement? Where does the requirement fall for the students to complete this? Because while it's a great concept, is there actually a requirement for them to do this? Because it's not in a class. Do they get a grade on it?

It's a graduation requirement. It is not graded. It's a graduation requirement? Yes, it's a requirement for graduation. Perfect. It's not graded per se. Okay. It's assessed through... Pass-fail. You either did it or you didn't.

Correct. And then do the students sort of monitor and build it themselves so they are given... access to a portfolio and then they sort of plug their own assignments and work into it and evaluate what's my best example of this and they can tweak it and something that they own as they go or is an assignment given and it's like this is going to be what we put in here type back i'll start with the first part okay and so each student is has their own folder yeah each advising teacher has a

Google Classroom for their advisory, and each student has a folder within that Google Classroom that is their portfolio. And does the district then sort of like sub-folder it for them? What do you mean by that?

Well, the Portrait of a Learner's got like, if I remember correctly, it's got like sort of a sixth.

Oh, yeah.

So, yeah, there's a folder with all the... We do have sort of an organized folder for them to go ahead and stuff digital examples of their work in.

They were also given a template presentation. which kind of broke down each skill area and then what should go here, what should go here. And so that was given to all the advisory teachers and all of the students. So they can tailor that as needed as they move forward. But they are given the kind of the bones of the portfolio number one, but also the presentation. And so, and then the advisory teacher, you know, throughout the course of the year, you know, will be acting as like a guide to the students to making sure that number one, they're like doing the work, like they're doing the work. individual assignments we don't necessarily want you know say you know spanish teacher for example said this assignment should be in this category right because part of the process is like each student experiences that learning opportunity differently potentially and so like you may look at it as a as a way to look at collaboration but i may see that as a critical thinking opportunity so that that reflective process is going to be part of the you know the step forward to identifying you know, learning styles and strengths and, you know, areas of challenging, areas of growth for each individual student. So we would prefer not to have a specific assignment labeled for a specific category. Yeah. To give more flexibility for students. Right. Good. And they receive help with their advisory.

Yes. Yep.

Okay. Yeah. And the group reach are like, I think the largest group we have is 17 students. And that advisory has two advisories. It's a Mr. Christie, Ms. Benson. They share that one. Right.

So, you know, I think it's, I think it's so, I think we all think it's so great. Cause like when your kid comes home from school, you're like, how was school?

Good.

What'd you do? Nothing. Right. So it's like, it's all kids and they're all good. And it's like, you know, How was high school? Good. What'd you do? What'd you learn about your problem? So now it's like, come on. You actually built this out over four years. This is work you can be proud of. This is work you can talk about. You learned about yourself during this process. You can share this with others.

Yes, we do have those identified big picture, big learning opportunities for each course. But we can all use those differently to identify how we can learn from that. Right.

And then once they start talking about their own work, it's so much easier for them to just become personable to whoever it is that they're talking to, whether it's a college application or a job interview or an internship or something.

And that's why we want to have some flexibility as well. It's not just tied to academic work that can go into the portfolio. We have so many kids that are involved in so many different types of activities, whether it's in school or out of school, that they can tie into their Portrait of a Learner portfolios.

So the portrait of a learner in its entirety needs to be completed for freshman upon graduation. Yes. That's when it first fully sets in.

Yeah, I mean, ideally we'll have some even current sophomores will be done. As we ramp it up, we'll have more opportunities for kids to actually look at all six categories and find evidence.

So it will be two competencies each year?

It was two this year, and then ideally we can get two or three next year. And then as kids get more comfortable with the process, it'll be easier to go through. all of them and they get to choose which two or this year they did yes um and then I I think like I said the the process for the final um presentations like senior year when when we're fully implemented there's a different strategies I guess like that we've seen schools use in particular like they in the end identify one area of like tremendous strength And then you say, this is how I demonstrated that kind of learning. So they produce these like laminated one-pagers. Showcasing. Showcasing, that kind of stuff. And so they really reflect on that. And yes, they have evidence for all six categories, but they really look at what their biggest strength is. So, you know, we're working towards that process and I think we'll figure it out and go along.

We remain very excited about this. Are teachers finding it at all helpful to use the rubrics within the assessment and instead of just A, B, C, but you have a rubric coming back to that rubric that they created together. The actual assignment. So that's kind of the assessment.

Yeah, so the assignments or learning opportunities themselves are graded in the classroom. And so then students use that feedback from teachers to identify how they can use that for their portfolio.

Cool.

So while the portfolio itself is not graded, the assessments themselves were at one point graded.

And just a quick question about the MTS. So in the Academic Support Center, that's not just servicing students with IEPs? No, it's separate. So the students with IEPs,

generally go to the learning center, which is an entirely different location. So the academic support center could be students who are receiving, at least this year we had, we hired mid-year a dedicated math support person in the ASD. So we have a lot of kids who are going down to Carmel for math support. Then we have some students with 504s who are in the ASC who are doing some work with executive function in the ASC. So there's a variety of types of students, I guess you're going to call it that, that are in the Academic Support Center, but it's not specific for students with IEPs, no.

Okay, thanks for that clarification.

Yeah, of course. And we're actually looking at ways to accommodate anything for ASC going forward next year to focus more on kind of a broader support for students around executive functions and those types of skills. That's it.

All right, thank you so much. Awesome, thank you.

Great presentation, sir.

Yeah. Okay, so next up on the agenda, we have a report on DESE's Group A Integrated Monitoring Review. Director of Student Services, Glenn Snow, will provide an overview and update on the district's Integrated Monitoring Review. Welcome, Glenn.

Thank you. So, as we know, DESE likes to keep us on our toes. They continue to evolve and reframe. So I've talked several times about the different reviews that we have, the process, how it unfolds. They've revamped the process of this review specific to this as well. You know, they love to keep things exciting for us, keep us on our toes, but Before I start, I do want to really commend, I know all of the principals have given updates, but I really need to commend everybody who's been involved in the process directly or indirectly because it's all the behind the scenes work that goes on that really takes months of preparation, reflection, self-assessment, the documentation and information gathering is vast. And so the process really touches every single school, almost every department and And really, nearly every role in the district in some way. So it does speak volumes to the district's commitment to continuous growth. And so now I'll dive in. So in Massachusetts, the role of public school monitoring is a unit within the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. They oversee the performance and compliance of public schools across the state. I'm just going to provide tonight a cursory overview of the process and just update you with where we're at in the process for Littleton with this particular review. It's a good one to use to learn about because of the depth and breadth of it. We do have reviews that are kind of going on at all times. We also had an Ed's ability review this year. We had an OLA one on our multilingual learners. And so they follow a similar process, but the scope is somewhat more limited. And so this slide just gives you a few resources that the public school monitoring department offers. They do really provide a lot of resources that can be utilized for school districts, but also community members if they would like to learn about the process in a deeper way as well. So you can go on to the next slide. One highlight of the 2526 review, Heath touched on it, is the Child Find requirement, which under IDEA, it mandates that school districts identify, locate, and evaluate children with disabilities who are in need of special education services, including those who are not yet enrolled, who are not enrolled in school. So focusing on District Child Find, it helps DESE ensure that all services All students who require services are identified early. And so this is done through a lot of outreach to the community, private schools that are within the geographical boundaries of Littleton, daycares in Littleton, and as well as through pre-referral at the SST process and having strong multi-tiered systems of support. We'll go on to the next slide. So over the past several years, DESE has significantly increased its focus on how districts implement and document tiered interventions and MTSS processes. So historically, many districts view tiered interventions as a general education support process that's separate from special education obligations. But now DESE is making it very clear that MTSS and child find responsibilities are different. are deeply interconnected. The key concern that DESE is examining through these reviews is whether students are remaining in interventions for extended periods of time without meaningful progress monitoring, structured problem solving discussions, adjustments to interventions based on data, or consideration of whether a special education evaluation may be And so, Desi's not saying that students can't receive intervention prior to referral. In fact, high-quality tiered interventions, they're expected and appropriate. The issue is not simply how long a student has been receiving interventions, but it's whether the districts are adequately able to demonstrate what interventions are provided. how the progress was monitored, what data was reviewed, what decisions were made, and how teams determined whether continued interventions or a referral for evaluation was appropriate. And so this is why DESE is now reviewing the SST and MTSS documentation, intervention histories, progress monitoring data, meeting notes, and evidence of problem-solving discussions as part of the IMR process. This is a change. This is new to this year. And so DESE's expectations is that districts use MTSS as an actively driven decision-making framework The strong MTSS systems actually support Child Fund by helping teens identify students through a systematic data review and intervention response. And so from a district perspective, it reinforces the importance of consistent documentation practices, clearly defined intervention cycles, and ongoing communication with families and collaborative decision-making regarding the referral consideration. So the goal is ensuring that students receive the right level of support at the right time and whether that support remains within general education interventions or moves towards a special education evaluation and services. We're on the next slide. And so this just emphasizes that MTSS and special education are complementary but distinct systems. So, for example, a student with an IEP who could be a really gifted writer but needs assistive technology or specialized interventions, they might not need a Tier 2 writing intervention, while another student who doesn't have an IEP could benefit from that targeted intervention because they have challenges in that area. So it's really individualized paths for every student. So one of the data collection gathering methods that Jesse had all of the schools collect is they provided us with a tiered interventions tracker, which is nice because now we're going to be able to kind of use that as a structured kind of system going forward. So all the schools are collecting the same documentation. And so between like 40 and 75 students are receiving tiered interventions in each school. It's important to know that data are fluid and that just like with special education, students can begin and end receiving interventions at any time. And it's really based on the progress monitoring. So students might receive interventions for six weeks, eight weeks, 20 weeks, 30 weeks. As long as those intervention cycles are happening, the progress monitoring is happening and the conversations, thoughtful conversations are happening about The interventions are working. We're going to continue with interventions. We don't suspect that there's a disability. We're seeing that the child is responsive to the intervention. So next is because Group A for this review is focused on identification, IEP development, programming, and support services, there's only, I don't want to say only, because it was a lot of documents that were reviewed. three document review criteria and items related to civil rights. So the way they look at it is this is a Group A review. So this one is very special education file heavy. It really looked a lot, looked deep at our MTSS and SST protocols where Group B, it kind of splits these three-year cycles into two different categories. That one is much more civil rights heavy. So they're looking much more at that. And then their onsite is more focused on looking at the facilities and going out into the buildings. And so the civil rights criterion 13, that's related to ensuring equal access to education. And that just addresses the availability of information And academic counseling about general curricular options and occupational vocational opportunities for students. So this is designed to make sure that all students, regardless of their background or disability, can have access to information and guidance to make informed decisions about their education and career paths. So making sure that it's not just focused on like a college track. and making sure that students have access and knowledge and are educated about all different types of opportunities. Civil rights criterion 14 ensures that counseling services and counseling materials are free from bias and stereotypes. And this is designed to promote fairness and equality in how students are advised and supported in their academic and career planning. And then criterion 18 It focuses on our early literacy screening and looks at whether the district has procedures in place to demonstrate that at least twice per year, the district assesses reading ability and progress in literacy skills for all students in kindergarten until at least grade three, and that we're using a valid developmentally appropriate screening instrument that has been approved by the Department of Ed. And so then they also look at these indicators. So we look at special education indicators 11, that is child find. So they're looking at the school district's response to a parental request for evaluation, and that establishes compliance with the child find requirements and ensures that students are evaluated in a timely fashion. So they're looking to make sure that when a parent requests a special education evaluation, that we're responding to them within five days by either issuing a consent or issuing a different letter of why, justifying why we are not issuing a consent for an evaluation. And then if we issue a consent, they're looking to ensure that within 30 days we complete testing and within 45 days the proposed IEP is in the parent's hands. And that when we propose an IEP, That after that feeding, they have that within five days if it's not an initial. So that then SE-12, special education 12, that's our turning three transition. And so this is called the part C to B transition. And this refers to the process under IDEA where a child who has been receiving early intervention services, so birth to age three, that they transition into special education without delay. So we are expected to, if we propose services for them, that at that birth date, when they turn three, that we are ready to service them. There can't be a delay. They start on their third birthday. And so the goal of this transition is really to provide a seamless shift into the educational services for children as soon as they reach school age, which is age three, ensuring that their needs continue to be met effectively. And then the indicator 13 is related to transition planning and services. So this looks at whether The student and the team vision and post-secondary transition sections of the IEP include the student's post-secondary goals. It looks at whether or not there are appropriate measurable post-secondary goals and that they're updated annually and that the post-secondary goals are those goals. They're based on age-appropriate transition assessment. And so they're also looking to see that the IEP includes transition services, including courses of study that will reasonably enable the student to meet their goals, and that they're looking at the student's transition services and making sure that they match the student's vision as well. And so they will look at all of the evidence, and they also are looking to make sure that once... in the year that the child turns 14, that they're invited to the IEP team meeting so that they can begin being part of those conversations. And then also they're looking at making sure that if there's a collateral or a participating agency like Mass Rehab or DDS, that they're also invited to the team meetings as well. And they're also looking that looking to make sure that we are providing the age of majority pay more during the year that the child is 17 turning 18, because then when they become an adult, they are their decision makers unless they delegate to their parents or unless they delegate to their parents as a shared decision maker. Next slide. And so this just gives you an idea of how the process unfolds temporally. And the only kind of edit to this is that our onsite week was pushed back and occurred in April, not March. And then a couple of additions that I have is that in May we received our preliminary feedback and then our reviewer holds a debriefing meeting with the superintendent and the district lead for the review. And so, um, That is where we are at right now. We had our debriefing meeting last week. And so then just to circle back a little bit, one of the larger components of the Group A review is that DESE also reviews all of the district's special education procedures to ensure that they're up to date and aligned with laws and regulations. So we upload into their security portal our procedural manual where they call through it and make sure that everything is there and aligns with all of the laws and regulations. And so then the next step is that we're currently in the process is that we have a due date of June 1st to provide some additional information that was requested by our reviewer from principals and then we will await their report. And so should there be any findings that require corrective action, the next phase is that we develop a corrective action plan and then there's progress reported that occurs with that. And so just to recap, the integrated monitoring process is inclusive of a discovery phase, an engagement phase, and then a closeout phase. And so the discovery prior to onsite, they review all of our system-wide data. The engagement is the activities that occur onsite or virtually through the issuance of the report. So a team of four reviewers came onsite. They requested a number of our special education files that met certain criteria. a student who was, you know, just to give an example, a student who is age 14 or older with this particular disability category who had a three-year reval within the past year. So they'll give us a number of criteria. We find a file that kind of meets those criteria. They give us the names, and then they review those files, and then they have the ability to, when reviewing those files, to ask for additional files. So they do a very deep dive. And then the closeout is that corrective action and progress monitoring. And so, as I've said, the discovery phase is data collection and indicator submission. So we upload hundreds of documents into the security portal for the department to review. And then next slide. The engagement phase involves the review of the procedural merit, the onsite visit, the record review, and then a report. And then finally, again, the next, oh, sorry, next slide, the closeout phase. If we have findings, there's a corrective action plan for any areas of finding. The next slide is my final slide. So if you have any questions, Thank you for letting me take you on a journey through the integrated monitoring review process and certainly answer any questions anybody has.

It really gives you a glimpse into the world that we deal with and you don't see. And it's very intensive. Just with this short presentation, this takes so much time on everybody's part. The administrators are involved in all these reviews as well. That's part of the central office that we never talk about. So we thought it was important tonight to bring you a glimpse of all the other stuff that we're involved in.

Teachers are interviewed. CPAC representatives have interviewed parents. A survey is sent out. All of this. So they really do. It's got a pretty wide breadth.

That was going to be my question, or is it if any of the data, there was a lot of, this is all of our data. Do they ask family members? Do they ask the students themselves? I mean, are they gathering information from the whole community? Yes. Okay. That was, as I went through, that was my big question. I'm like, yeah.

Yeah, we put out a press release and then the department requests a file, a spreadsheet for all of the email addresses for all families who have children on IEPs. And then the department actually sends out a survey to all families. Yeah, interesting. Thank you.

I was just doing some Googling here. So is this a five-year review process?

A, A, B to B. Yeah, so group A, so we're in group A. Right, 2021. So they call it the 25-26 on-site year. So starting in the spring of last year, we do what was a self-assessment. There's no more self-assessment where we have the ability to kind of self-assess and correct. Before, when it was a tier-focused monitoring, there would be a self-assessment phase where you would be able to kind of correct before you moved into that onsite year. Now you could self-assess yourself. So we have been doing that. And then starting, we had a due date of May 15th to do all of our preliminary document uploads. We did that. And then this year is considered our onsite year. So last year, they would be considered that kind of self-assessment. This is our onsite year. And then the third year would be if we have corrective action, your corrective action plan, your progress reporting, and then reporting back on your practice. That's the third year. So then the next year would be starting the review cycle.

Okay. So the last time we got a report was 2021, I think, looks like. It was, so...

we actually so we were group b and 2023 yes 2023 so 20 but the um cycle got a little bit adjusted because it's not a good question i'm looking at the report yeah yeah and so there were there but the cycle was a bit off because because desi um adjusted their timelines even though districts weren't able to do it so they should have done their on-site actually in march of 2020 Yeah. But then they did that when that year that I started. Yeah.

Yeah. So it came back, it came back April 5th, 2021. There were no corrective actions. That was good. And I, like you said, this is like constantly changing, evolving, really changing. When you submitted everything and you had your interviews, or is there any sort of like preliminary feedback or areas of improvement or?

Yes, we have a pre-finding. So the, which is okay, by the way.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Totally okay.

Yep.

A lot of times when you get audited and there are no findings.

No, we actually had an incredibly clean review this time around, too. We have a pre-finding correction, which means that And I mentioned that, that they're giving us a little bit more time. They see an area that they see might be of concern, but they believe that the district might have additional information that we haven't provided. Sure. So the principals have been extremely responsive to me to say, I need your evidence of progress monitoring, of conversations and discussions around why or why not a child was, who was receiving tiered interventions was either referred or at state and receiving interventions. So I have received a multitude of documents that I have been uploading and will be continuing to upload. And if that satisfies this pre-finding correction, then we'll have no other things.

And it's a public document, so we don't need a presentation. Can you just let us know when it gets published?

Oh, yes, absolutely. Yeah, we have a message. We'll go through actually school now.

Great.

Well, I just wanted to tell you how grateful we are for your expertise. We're lucky to have you that you're able to not only understand special ed law so well, but the DESE requirements. This is so complex.

And I do like to keep changing it. Yeah, like you feel like you're proficient with it. When I started, it was called a coordinated program review. And then they shifted to a tier-focused monitoring, which was more of a supportive process. But then because of the findings that DESE got from the federal government, they've had to shift it back to this kind of integrated monitoring review, which is more somewhat similar to the coordinated program review of days past.

Well, it takes an incredible attention to detail to stay on top of all this, so... So thank you for that. And, you know, it seems like so much reporting to DESE and so much accountability to DESE. I'm just always curious if you feel like you benefit at all from any of these protocols. Absolutely. Like, did you get any new ideas for progress monitoring? Oh, for sure.

I think that that's the nice thing. I mean, nobody wants to have like a finding, but You know, it's nice that we've got this area that we're going to continue to work on to kind of tighten up our systems and have a consistent SST process across all of the schools because it's just going to strengthen our multi-tiered systems of support so that then all of the information is really kind of in, you know, and organized in a way that it's easily kind of accessible. And then it's a system that's also consistent and familiar to families all the way through kind of the vertical articulations.

Awesome.

Thank you so much. Before you step away, you're up next for the next presentation as well. So don't get comfy. So our next presentation also from our director of student services, Lynn Snow. So you'll give an update on the Littleson Public Schools bullying.

Yes, this one will be far more brief. I just wanted to briefly review our bullying and intervention plan. and give an overview of the district ongoing process for reviewing and updating the plan, because we do that every other year. It's required under mass law. And the purpose of the plan is to ensure that students are able to learn in state, respectful, supportive school environments that are free from bullying, cyberbullying, retaliation, discrimination, and harassment. And the plan is applied district-wide across all grade levels and emphasizes both prevention and response intervention. Next slide.

All right, there it is.

I love this. This is kept. This is courtesy of chat GPT. I love this beautiful infographic. I uploaded our district bullying plan and gave it a really wordy prompt and it gave me this lovely infographic. But so what it does is just summarize that at the core of the plan outlines what bullying is and how it's defined under mass law, the expectations for prevention in school climate, procedures for reporting and responding, supports and interventions for student-staff responsibilities, partnerships with families and the broader community, and the district approaches grounded in prevention first. So this includes explicit instruction in social-emotional learning, which you hear infused through all of the principal's school-based updates. And then the school-wide behavioral expectations, stride, heart, things like that. staff training, age-appropriate prevention curriculum, and building inclusive school communities where students feel connected, respected, and supported. And so the plan also establishes a clear reporting and response process, and reports may be made by students, family, staff members, or community members. They can also be made anonymously. When reports are received, administrators promptly investigate, notify families, and implement safety and support measures where appropriate, and determine if interventions are consequences when allegations are substantiated. And the focus is always on student safety. And one thing to note is that part of that, when a bullying report is made, in order for it to be investigated, it does need to meet the legal standard and the definition of bullying. And so in accordance with state requirements, we review and update the plan every other year. And so we look at the laws and DESE guidance to see if there's any updates that we just need to make weekly to our plan. We look at our district practices and procedures. We look at trends and data related to student behavior and school climate issues. Michelle mentioned she's looking at walkie call data. We're looking at students' behavior intervention plans. We're looking at, you know, if there are students, any type of like suspensions, discipline, restraints, that kind of thing. And we gather feedback from administrators, staff, families, and stakeholders. So the principals will be meeting with their school-based leadership teams to gather any input and suggestions to consider to update the plan. And then in the fall, the plan, the updated draft plan will be presented to school committee for your review and approval.

before it's being readopted and shared publicly with families any questions uh what trends are you seeing are you seeing any changes kind of like it's the last years and we're not avoiding maybe more maybe less like is there anything to kind of gather i guess or

It's certainly, we do not have a pervasive bullying issue. What I will say is that we have a lot of what would be considered social conflict among students. There are, you know, allegations of bullying that the principals do look into regularly. And, you know, some are substantially and some not, but I would say our rates are very low comparatively to students. a lot of other districts and I think that that speaks to all the preventative measures that the schools put in place and really embracing the social emotional learning piece thank you my question is um you said uh you know so social conflict and the administration investigates more than the length of place

my my understanding my sort of like feedback to the community is um is i guess my question for you is there any harm in a family pursuing or filling out and submitting a political form well so that's what i've generally been telling people like if they're having an issue right there's conflict among students or whatever you know they come to me a school committee member and they like want me to solve their problem but i'm like Fill the form out. It notifies the administration. They have an obligation to respond. An investigation takes place.

It gives us the information.

An investigation starts at the time the form is submitted. The form is submitted in such a this isn't bullying.

This is something else.

But at least there's documentation that the family's concern was heard and action was taken. Whether the action is declined, accepted, investigation needs to take place, all that good stuff. So I just think that's important for all of us to know. And I also think that perhaps maybe the community needs a better understanding of just fill the form out. Where you start is the form. And every parent wants to protect their child And there's no harm in filling out the form. Fill out the form, see what's there, and let the school and the professionals take care of it. Because I think oftentimes there's frustration from families when they don't fill out the form and they have conversations or email exchange and the administrator might determine this isn't bullying. And if we would just say, start with the form, that sort of puts the district on the clock. They have to respond. Betsy, if I decided to give it to folks, I kind of wanted you to say, hey, that's what you should be doing, or there are issues with that.

No, I think it's helpful. There's no requirement that they have to fill out the form. So we can take reports in verbally, anonymously, but they'll I will say the form is great because it's helpful and it's, and it goes through Google form for it. So it's very, it's very simple to do. There's no requirement on, on you didn't give enough information. So we can't accept the, you know, what, what you've put in. It does kind of prompt and initiate that, that initial reach out to the family to gather more information, to, to get context, to, to get a deeper understanding of the allegation so that we can determine like if,

allegations if true would meet the uh would meet the criteria it's also important for our families to to realize that even if it isn't bullying that doesn't mean the corrective actions to take 100 right sometimes just the social consequences they need they need like they need a guided conversation to work it out and it flushes itself out but

And would you go about making an anonymous report for the form? Or just like if I wanted to be anonymous in my report? Yeah, because through the form, you have to enter your email address.

And you can leave those blank. OK. OK. Yeah.

Oh, so the form doesn't track email addresses. Um, we don't have time.

Is the, um, is the plan and the other anonymous way is that we do have any, anybody can,

Each of the buildings needs to have paper forms available that can be picked up by somebody that they can hand out and send in if they really didn't want to have like an IP address or something like that. Yes.

Is there a different version of the plan for the different grade fans? Or is it one plan for the whole district?

One plan for the whole district.

But then the way it's communicated at the schools is a whole different story, right? Because it would have to be age appropriate.

Right. Yeah. And the plan doesn't run that well.

Okay. It's a great graphic. I love it. It'd be great to blow up components of it for messaging. Yeah. You know, there's a lot on there.

Yeah, it kind of encapsulates it in a place very aesthetically pleasing. Yes.

Easily digestible. Any other questions? All right. Thank you so much, Lindsay. Yes, we have a lot of questions. Okay, so next up on the agenda is the post-secondary plans for the class of 2026. So Superintendent Kelly Clinchy is going to summarize the various schools that our 2026 high school graduates will be attending.

And we set this up after the package was posted. I was writing something the other week, actually the other day, and I used the phrase, one should choose curiosity over fear. And when I look at this class, it's not different than other classes that have graduated, but you see very vividly that our students are willing to be curious learners and apply and go to colleges that may not be comfortable to them at this point in time. They're all over the nation and all over the world. In Spain, Dublin. I mean, it's just really interesting. Again, it isn't getting late. I don't want to spend too much time on this, but we just quickly just skim with what's in front of you. It's amazing in terms of what our students are doing in terms of venturing out. And then what's interesting locally, kudos to them. They found what they needed closer to home. And we always have a couple of students that choose the military. One's joining the United States Army, and the other one is... has been accepted into Westmoreland, which is really difficult. And you can see a great variety of universities, you know, University of Maine, Rhode Island, California, Florida.

The rough winter we had. Yes.

It could be. You know, the one that stood out to me, they all stood out, but one that, you know, the University of Holy Cross, College of Holy Cross. Not sure where they're going to go at this point in time, but from what I've been reading, there's been a number of universities that are going to backfill for those students.

Oh, Holy Cross is one of the ones that's going to backfill?

Yes.

Wow. Maybe they'll phase it out. I'm not sure exactly how quickly it's going to shut its doors. But anyway, kudos to our students. It's just always really inspirational to see what our students are doing from year to year.

An impressive list. Yeah, good spread. I'm also interested that students aren't going to college with their friends. Like they're going off, they're doing their own thing. And, you know, obviously we'll have a lot of kids going to Middlesex and to UMass, the different campuses of UMass. But other than that, it's like one by one by one, they're just going out into the world. It's very extreme.

You know, what a great skill set. Yeah. You feel comfortable venturing out?

Yeah.

at that age. So I'm really proud of one of our students.

Oh, is it?

Did I have the wrong one? Holy Cross is pretty well established.

Yeah.

Let me take that off the record.

The minutes reflect.

Yes. I was going to question you, too.

I'm like, I think I would have. It's the oldest Catholic school in New England. I haven't considered it.

Well, that's good news.

All the kids accepted. I can't imagine. I mean, good on them because it's a scary time too. Even if we're just saying and accepting that there are schools that are closing and these kids are like, yeah, I'm going to get out there anyway. Go down. That's a lot of guts.

Any other comments about post-secondary plans?

Other terrific representation of the newly graduating class. Yep. Absolutely. Travel done. Yep. 8 to 12.

Congratulations.

June 5th.

And you'll get to speak to all of them, right?

Yes. Congratulations on June 5th.

Do we have a district slideshow?

We do, and for the sake of brevity, it's really nice to be able to bring what's happening in our schools to the school committee. We have a lot of presentations throughout the year. We've made numerous attempts. bringing students to the school committee, please. But I mean, the opposing forces are our students are really busy, and it's later at night. And it's just hard to be able to find time for our students to come and do presentations. Now again, we get lucky. So I think it's really important to show a slideshow like this. I've been doing this for years, and special thanks to Julie Lord and some high school students that help out with these presentations. But it truly, you know, brings the schools to you, and we know pictures say a thousand words. So... That's what works.

After that, let's hope that... We wouldn't want to deprive you of this final year. Exactly. Hold on, hold on. All right, hold on one second, one second.

I'm sharing your audio.

We just love seeing the slideshow. Is it possible to get the link to that?

It's not in the packet. It's always nice to just be able to see the energy in our schools.

Was that the turkey trot? If they still have that, I saw a kid with drumsticks. That must be the turkey cracker. I'm glad they're still doing that. Please thank the folks that put that together. That was great. Okay, so moving on to the financial update. Business Manager Steve Mark will give the financial update.

Okay. So, thank you. Reports on the screen. It's in the packet. I'm actually excited to come out to the slideshow for once because I think the slideshow really highlights what the budget is going toward, right? So, you saw a state-of-the-art technology, and you saw state-of-the-art facilities that are clean and well-maintained, heat, light, power, all that. We're able to accomplish all that within the current budget. We're not worried about running out of money for the year, so we have sufficient funds to support all these programs and start planning for next year as well. So I'm happy to answer questions, but the good news is, Financially, we're in good shape through the end of the year. And again, I'm just thankful that school committee fights for the budget and we have the budget and the funds to support the program that everybody works on. High quality teachers, state-of-the-art equipment, facilities, transportation, all of that is covered. So yeah, it's great. The slideshow was great.

Well, I just love that you continually bring us good news. It's good news. Yeah. Interesting.

Steve, I'll ask a question. So this is going to bring us to June 30th. We've got five weeks left. And I write, you know, a lot of the salaries continue over the summertime to really get that explanation there and provided previously. We're only at a 52% spend on special ed, but I know that we can have some big ticket expenses as we get close to June 30th. Of the $3.2 million remaining, do we foresee all of those funds going out before June 30th, which would likely be prepaid for next year?

We will likely be able to prepay some SPED tuition for next year out of this. We actually had some students that dropped out of the program this year that we didn't know about before, some high-cost students drop out of that program. So we will not expend everything that we expended previously. that we expected and budgeted for special ed tuition that allows us to prepay some tuition for next year, allows us to reinvest some of those funds this year into some building projects as well.

They didn't drop out. I just want to clarify. Students who apply don't drop out.

Right, right.

So off of our expenses.

Right, right, right. I mean... Yes. It's not our fiscal responsibility or does they move out of district, but hopefully, you know, that student is getting support in the other town. So we're in good shape.

But better to have it that way than the other way around, which is, you know. Yes. Yeah. And it could happen. Like the facilities. No, I'm just kidding. Right.

It's only 103%. It's fine. Well, that's likely to go up as we shift some funds around at the end of the year. Right. So yeah. Okay.

Sounds good. Okay.

Thank you. So now we have that signature authorization that was foreshadowed earlier when we were talking about the subcommittee assignments. So the accounts payable and payroll. So business manager Steve Mark will review the signature authorizations requested by the town of Littleton.

Right. So there's a letter in your packet that explains what's needed. So typically, school committees are required to have three authorized signers for both payroll and accounts payable allowance. Some school departments do that. Some cities and towns require three. There is provisions that school committee can vote to assign one person to be that authorized person. That's what we've done for a number of views here. So instead of Instead of three school committee members reviewing accounts payable packets, you assign it to one person to review on behalf of the school committee. So that's what we're looking to do if the school committee decides to continue with that practice is approve one person as the authorized signer for payroll and one person, usually the same person, as the authorized signer to approve the accounts payable warrants. And again, those are done through a docu-share a DocuSign document so you're no longer having to come into the office and sign physical paper. It's a DocuSign document that you can review. You can drill down. You can see the detail if you want to and things like that. So that's what the town is looking to see if we want to continue with that.

And that's the thing that it happens every Friday.

It's every two weeks. Every two weeks payroll, every two weeks accounts payable, and then that same person also gets authorized. Well, no, that's not true. It would be the chairman. We do journal entries to move funds from one fund to another fund appropriated to revolving or whatever. We need to move some funds around. Those journal entries have to be signed by the chairman. We deal with that on a DocuSign basis as well. We're not doing, we don't do a lot of those. We will have some of those and there are always some as we reclass items and things like that. But This is primarily the accounts payable and the payroll authorization and warrants. So we just need our community member to be that authorized representative. And typically it's been the chair, but I'm happy to do that.

I mean, I recommend, yeah, it's pretty quick. It's literally a click. I recommend if you stick with one person, I will say, look, I believe that all five select board members sign it. Maybe they have three per charter or whatever. And I think once you see it, you know, you might ask a question of Steve or you might call a select board member like, hey, did you look at this, blah, blah, blah. But once you start to see them, you get pretty familiar with them. If you ever need help, you can ask me and talk to Steve. It would be redundant to have multiple people in my opinion looking at it.

Yeah, I designed it as well, and I had the details, and you can see the details. So if there's any questions, just call, and we can answer any questions. Hey, what are we spending $100,000 on? We can answer the question.

I'm happy to do that. So We'll need a motion then?

Yes, we need a formal motion vote. That means that Elaine Sandman be nominated to be a signature authorization person for accounts payable bills and payroll.

So that was a nomination, so you're moving to appoint?

Yeah, we're moving to appoint.

Sure. I second. All in favor? Aye. Anybody opposed? Okay.

All right. We'll do the minutes and send that authorization to the town. Thank you.

Thank you very much. So this is the second opportunity for interested citizens. I mean, I don't see anyone in person.

There's nobody online.

Okay. So now let's get to the subcommittee reports. So PMBC, Sean?

Yeah, PMBC is actually coming right in.

Okay. Anything from the budget subcommittee?

I don't have anything to report.

Nothing new? No. Policy subcommittee, is that still on hold?

That's on hold until the new superintendent is able to work with us.

Okay. And Shaker Lane Building Committee, anything?

Not really. I guess I was being vice chair and did work with the county. But also just want to give a shout out to... to uh mary lee she went on to a podcast on the podcast about the sustainability piece so yeah i'm sure you were working with them but uh yeah some good stuff there awesome and then finally the communications subcommittee yeah i had uh mike then on the podcast obviously uh all of us got the opportunity to uh go to the time and time it was great um but it was a great conversation uh a lot of reflection on his time here

She's leaving behind quite the legacy. She is.

Big shoes to fill.

Big shoes to fill. OK. Well, now we're going to move into executive session for union contract negotiations. So I'm going to need a motion to enter into executive session to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with union personnel or to conduct collective bargaining sessions pursuant to mass general law You say that. 30A21A3. So moved. Second.

Are you going to return? No.

And we will not reconvene in open session.

So moved officially.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. Motion carries.