School Committee - Regular Meeting

Notices hereby given that the Salem School Committee will hold a public hearing on June 1 at 6 p.m. This meeting will take place in person at 29 Highland Avenue, room 227, Salem, Massachusetts. You can also join via Zoom using the link in the agenda. I'm going to call the meeting to order. The Salem School Committee would like to hear from the public on issues that affect the school district and are within the scope of the committee's responsibilities. Spanish interpretation is available for anyone who needs it. The members of the school committee would like to remind the public that Salem Public Schools students regularly attend school committee meetings. We encourage all meeting participants to model respectful and productive public discourse for our young learners. spanish language interpretation is provided for all regular school committee meetings to listen to this meeting with spanish language interpretation please see instructions on the agenda instructions for participating in public comment if you wish to participate in public comment portion of the evening You may come up to the podium to speak during this section of the meeting. If you wish to provide a comment via Zoom, you may do so by entering the Zoom meeting link and clicking the raise hand feature. When it is your turn to speak, a host will announce your name and will unmute your line and allow you to speak. I WILL TAKE A MOTION TO OPEN THE PUBLIC HEARING ON THE INNOVATION PLAN FOR SARAH PARKER RAMON SCHOOL. MOVE TO OPEN THE PUBLIC HEARING. SECOND?

SECOND.

ALL IN FAVOR? WE HAVE TO DO A ROLL CALL VOTE. MAYOR HOFFMAN? I LIKE THAT. MEMBER HOFFMAN? YES. I'M JUST GOING TO CALL EVERYONE THERE. ALL IN FAVOR, SO WE WILL BEGIN THE AND MYSELF, YES, THANK YOU. WE WILL MOVE TO OPEN PUBLIC COMMENTS. IF THERE ARE ANY COMMENTS IN THE ROOM? ANY COMMENTS ONLINE?

VICE CHAIR? Yes. This is member Miranda. I just wanted to, I'm just in favor of that motion that was on the table as well.

Great. Thank you. Okay. Seeing no public comment online or in the room, I will entertain a motion to close the public hearing on the innovation plan for Sarah Parker Ramon School.

Move to close the public hearing.

Second.

Second.

Roll call vote. Member Miranda. yes member hoffman yes member bias yes member stop yes and myself yes the public hearing portion is closed so i will move on to the presentation for new liberty innovation plan removal uh Renewal. Renewal. Not removal.

No one's the mayor, and it is not a removal. Thank you. I'll pass that to you. Yeah. Okay. So I'm not going to do anything other than introduce our presenters. The principal of New Liberty Innovation School, Jamal Kamah, has been working with the team over the last several months to develop the renewal and updated plan, which he is included in the packet. and he's gonna present some of the highlights of that plan now.

Okay.

Over to you.

I don't see the slides.

So Mark can pull up the slides. And do you have the clicker? Yeah.

Okay. Can everyone hear me?

Yes.

Okay, all right. So this is our reauthorization of our innovation plan and this plan will run through school year 27 to 31. Just wanted to give a little timeline in terms of the background information for New Liberty. The school committee voted on New Liberty Innovation School in school year 2016 and 17. And from what I understand, it was a need in the school district in terms of addressing the dropout rate. I believe at that time I looked at the stat. I think for Salem Public Schools, the dropout rate was 4.2%, and right now the dropout rate is 1.7, below 2%. So I believe New Liberty has done its part in terms of getting those rates down. So there was one reauthorization in 21 to 26, and now here we are seeking another reauthorization that's going to go from 26 to 31.

And Jamal, just before that, it was Horseman Charter School in the district before it was an innovate and then moved to the innovation status. So it's been around before 2016, but you're right. It was first voted as an innovation school at that time.

Thank you. I just wanted to note our mission. We engage all students with real-world learning about themselves and empower them to create a positive impact on the community. And I'm really looking to have students possess the tools that's going to help them beyond graduation. A little bit about the process. I convened a bunch of our members, including people in the community, students, parents, staff. We started planning out in February and we ended around late May. And I have a list of the members on this slide right here, as you can see. And I just wanted to share some data points that we are proud of. You know, we did some deep diving and looking at school year. I'm sure some of you have seen this data before. But we started looking over time, looking at school year 21 to 22. And so during that time, our four-year graduation rate was 22.2%. Last year, we were at 69%, which, again, for a school that is serving overage, undercredited students, I think those numbers are very impressive. Of course, we have a lot of work to do. We anticipate to be around 71% this year. And our five-year rate, if you look at from the start where we started to market, was 20%. Last year, it was 55.6%, and we're looking to be around 70% for our five-year. Chronic absenteeism, as you can see, it was pretty high in 21, 22 at 82%. We have gone down to 67%. Although those numbers have been lowered, but we still have a lot of work to do. We want to be You know, our goal is to be around 50. Right now we're around 54 percent. So we're trending down. But again, we have a lot of work to do and we really want to get those numbers down. Our daily attendance have gone up throughout the years, going from 64. to 86% right now. Our students are coming in, they're engaged, and they're ready to learn. We have decreased the dropout rate from 27.8. Last year was 11%. We're down to 9%. Again, a lot of work to do. We're still engaging, trying to re-engage our students who are on the dropout list, and we're looking to bring those numbers down even further. Okay, a little bit about our MCAS performance summary. So if you look at math, we had 56% of our students who achieved meeting and partially meeting expectations, nine out of 16. ELA, 79%, again, meeting and partially meeting, signed 78. We don't have the data for this year, of course, but we really were focusing on our data-informed instruction, doing lesson internalization, academic monitoring. We've been participating in the district common assessments. So we hope those numbers increase. So we'll see when the scores come out. All right, here's where we get to the good part. And let's get started. We are really, really excited about this move. As you know, since I've been at this district was kind of like, wait, there's a school in the mall. Like what's going on here? It's not that, you know, it's really not ideal. But we are very excited to move into this new space. Our students are ready. Our staff are ready. And, you know, we Although our school is in a mall, it feels like a school when we're upstairs on the second floor, as some of you may know. But the reality is we have to deal with a lot of situations in the mall. But we are very excited about this move. We're not so excited about packing and unpacking and that. But once we get in, it's a new beginning for New Liberty. We're turning the chapter to this new stage. So we're really excited. So part of our innovation plan, we're really looking at this next five years and what we wanna be and where we wanna go and focusing on career pathways is our first step. I'm really looking at students not just seeking diplomas, but students getting diplomas, students getting industry certifications and also transferable college credits. That diploma plus model that's going just beyond a high school diploma, We also, we're coining this new liberty at night. We're looking at a PM program for our students who are over age, under credited, trying to support them and accelerate their learning and getting them back on track. And also we're looking to do alumni and a family network. I think we can do a better job with engaging our families and we can do a better job in engaging our alumni. So the first step is our pathways. So right now we have our internships and we've really been launching it. We're really excited about our internships that start and just trying to get kids out. That's our focus, get kids out and get them tapped into the community. But what we realize is we're doing a lot of one-offs. So we started to look at... We wanted things to make sense, right? And we wanted to align it with academics rather than kids just going into internships for the experience. So we're really looking how we tie academics to job training, to certification, job shadowing and internships. So we're looking to launch by our fifth year to be full integration. We want to launch each one pathway each year. So next year would be like our foundational year. Taking the inventory in terms of the internships that we have right now, looking at our program of study, looking at our partners and see how we can align it. So for example, we're looking at a business pathway and we're kind of seeking an engineering pathway. We want to make things, we want it to make sense and we want to expose our students to high demand career pathways. So that is the focus there. In addition to our college, early college course pathways, we have that too. So we really want to get students certifications, job training, and also expose them to early college. Our second one, New Liberty at Night. So with this program, what we're starting to see, as I noted with the dropout rate, that we've decreased, so we're under 2%. So we're not really looking at those numbers as much anymore, but what we're starting to see is we're starting to see students who are coming to us second year ninth graders, third year ninth graders. We have been proactive in terms of recruiting and engaging students at Collins, eighth graders, to start their high school experience with us, but we're noticing a bubble with students who are repeating ninth grade. And it's difficult for a student to come to our schools as a second grade, sorry, as a second year ninth grader and integrating with true ninth graders. So we're trying to be proactive with our PM approach and finding a spot for students to, be exposed to our PM schedule, our PM courses, still participate in our program of study, and eventually integrating them back into the AM programming. So just trying to accelerate them, but doing it in a respectful and appropriate way, and not putting a bunch of students in mixed grades together. So that is our approach, and we're seeing there's a bubble there, and we really wanna be proactive and address this need. Our next one is our alumni and family network. So again, DESE tracks students for alumni, DESE tracks students two year, four year, unknown, work, trade, military. And what we have been noticing in the past is our students were in the unknown and other category. So we really want to address that, right? So we're really going to be diploma plus. We need to be able to track our students, know where they are, support them, engage them. So things like career connections, we have a resource hub on our website to update students about opportunities that they can come back and engage in. Constant mentorship. and one-on-one guidance and coaching for students. Again, we want to move from the other and unknown, and we want to get students more into two-year, four-year, and trade. So tracking where our students are going and being able to tap into what they're doing and engage them, we feel like those numbers will shift. And with our family engagement, like I said, we can do a better job with engaging our families, having them come to our school and check in, sending newsletters to let them know what's happening, and for them to be able to step into our building and also share with us what they were like for the school and provide their voice. Again, we have some families who are engage in this work, but we can definitely have more families and just have this home-to-school communication with them. This is an area of growth for us, and like I said, we can do a better job in engaging our families and having them become part of our school community. Thank you so much for listening to my presentation. I appreciate your time and effort. I'm open for questions and comments and suggestions.

Awesome. Thank you, Jamal. I'll open it up to questions from the members unless Kate, would you like to add anything?

No, I just, I will say that the pieces that Jamal presented tonight are in addition to the innovations that they have in place like their competency-based model and their focus on developing the portrait of the graduate habits with the students, early college, like those things are staying in place and in the plan they're articulated. They weren't sort of didn't make it to the slides tonight, but so that it is a complete picture. These are the three or four next steps that they're building on based on their needs assessment, where there are opportunities to really strengthen the student experience. And, you know, which means not just programs for kids, but reaching out to families, strengthening, as you said, your family outreach and support. So I just wanted to kind of paint that picture that this is in addition to all the things they currently do.

Can I just be clear on one thing about the PM school? So I know there was some confusion in terms of what we're trying to do. So these are stipend positions that will be open to teachers at our school and also teachers in the district as well and partners. And also it's pending funding, of course, from the district. So I just wanted to be clear about that part of it.

Questions from the members?

Thank you for the presentation and the visit recently that I had. It was really eye opening for me. I wanted to make one comment. You said at the very beginning when you were talking about your data, you said I think these numbers are impressive. I just want to say they are impressive. You don't need to guess. I did have a question in regards to the plan. And you kind of just answered it with saying that what you presented was in addition to the kind of base plan. So I'm looking forward to really diving into that when I read it again. But I wanted to ask if there was anything that was in your previous innovation plan that you've left behind or you're no longer moving forward? Because it seems like these pieces are kind of in addition now. Is there anything that kind of wasn't working that you think will be a big change or did most of it carry over?

Well, in the previous plan, there was things like we wanted to build a community school and we wanted to have like an artist and resident. So different initiatives and also like our tracking system and things like that. We wanted to build like a hub for students and how to grade them, how for them to see their learning and their progress in real time. So that has like launched us. But I would say we kind of crafted a new vision with feedback from students, from parents, and also from staff, just looking at the need of the district and seeing where the trends are, and that's how we kind of build that five-year vision for us.

Thank you. Other members? Member Miranda?

Yes, thank you. Thank you for this presentation. I especially love the more innovative stuff that I think we are all hearing about as it relates to our students getting out into the real world. So I appreciate that. I just wanted to ask, is there any collaboration between New Liberty and Salem High School? Any spaces to share information share resources or kind of areas that both are tackling where they could maybe better tackle it together?

So there's been collaboration in terms of the PM school idea. I've talked to administrators at Salem High to identify students, to identify some of the trends. So we are in partnership just looking at how we can best support students that fall in that category.

Amazing. That's great. Thank you. And then my last question, if it's okay, and I realize this is maybe a bigger question, but what supports do you need from us as school committee members to better support the work?

Of course, funding is always great, so I would start with the funding. And just your overall support in terms of putting our message out there and what we're trying to do. I'm noticing like New Liberty, like our, the perception in the district, in the community have changed. And so I want that to continue where people know what we're about, to look at our website, watch our video, come visit. Just want the community to know that we're here. We're a school. We're here to support students. We're part of the district.

another high school in the district um so if word can get around that we exist and you can spread the word and tell people to come and visit us that would be great thank you go ahead so just in terms of the funding so we have tried to um as as the new liberty vision and mission has really taken shape um under jamal's leadership uh tried not tried but have connected um Jamal to partners that we've worked with who have helped with funding. So in the read trust grant that we have that supports a lot of the work around internships and science education, we've really kind of upped our game around supporting and funding different initiatives. So lots of materials, lots of great, I think, you know, professional development. And we're paying the interns from New Liberty that go out into the community using that grant. I joined Jamal as he hosted a site visit for Barr Foundation and two of the folks that are very much in the lead at bar in funding the high school pieces came and Jamal did a great job. Students did presentation to members of the bar. So that's sort of an emerging partnership. It hasn't come to total fruition.

We're getting there.

Yeah, but dialogue is open, and I think they could see just the joy and the beauty of the New Liberty program, and so we're hoping that that continues and does manifest itself in future funding for your program. Yep.

Any other follow up question. I I just have a couple of thoughts one is I just want to echo members thought that I can't imagine there are a lot of high schools in the commonwealth overall that have that kind of progress around. Around graduation rates and absenteeism. So it's just incredibly remarkable And you know that I think your school is awesome. So The what one thing that I I hope as a body that we can work on going forward and I said this when We were talking about The Sarah Parker Ramon innovation program is that we sometimes we have our innovation schools and we don't we don't take the best from those innovation schools into our other schools, which is really what we should be doing. And so when we're thinking about this alumni family network, I've spoken with Meg Sousa up at the high school that this is something that they really need to work on as well, to be able to track our students when they get out, if they make it through four years in their chosen college, if they transfer, where they are in the workforce. And so I think having using new liberty as a pilot so that you can then collaborate with the high school and think about how to upscale that and adapt it for a larger more diverse population I think will be really beneficial to all all of our high school students so I hope that we can think about that going forward. I DID ALSO WANT TO JUST MET TALK ABOUT THAT JUST GET A LITTLE MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE NIGHT. THE NIGHT PROGRAM BECAUSE I I THINK IT'S A GREAT IDEA BUT AND AND WHEN MEMBER BIAS AND I CAME WE TALKED ABOUT IT AND IT'S GREAT AND SO I'VE TALKED ABOUT IT WITH SUPERINTENDENT CARBONI AS WELL AND SO THE CONCERN THAT I HAVE IS LIKE IS STAFF BURNOUT. BECAUSE I HAVE SEEN UP CLOSE HOW HARD. you all work and the idea that you would not go home or that you would go home and come back is sort of like on my radar a little bit. I'm sure that's something that the staff has already communicated and I know that you have a good relationship with your staff. So I'm just wondering like how are we gonna work around that to ensure that we don't have staff burnout at the same time that you have these you know, seasoned educators who really know the program, know the language, know the expectations, that just seems, I'm just curious about like how do you envision that working without burning out your staff who are working during the day?

Yeah, that's why we like to open it up, not just for our staff, but for other folks in the district and other folks outside of the district that may be tied to us. So I do understand, like, that would be a long day for anyone, but really just trying to find people in the district that, you know, would like to... teach our students in the evenings and just looking at different people around the district, around outside of the district. So really trying to do that and not burn our staff out.

So I would, you know, it's the ideal, you're looking for two teachers, right? So it's not a complete, I mean, you only have, I think, four teachers, technically, core teachers. So it would be the ELA and the math to extend those. And it would be a couple of hours, three times a week.

Yeah, so the way we mapped it out, and again, this is just kind of like a sample. So we would have, like you said, ELA and math, those content teachers. We would have a coordinator to kind of facilitate the learning and engaging with the students and families. And another part of our... program would be some sort of online learning for students for science. So trying to cover those three core classes that would help accelerate students. And it wouldn't be every day. So we're looking at a four to six schedule with three in-person instruction and then two remote learning days. So it wouldn't be every day, but just trying to just trying to engage students at least three times a week to come in. And we have two cohorts we're looking at potentially. So we could service, I would say, 16 to 20 students at night.

And it may be ideal for someone like, I know for my first six or seven years as a teacher, I didn't have a full-time position. I was like cobbling things together across different schools and programs. So it might be ideal for someone who's like 0.5 or 0.6 and doesn't quite have a full-time position, either here or in a local district. So it may not be suitable for someone who is working full-time, to your point.

Yep.

be more suitable for someone who's looking for something part-time or to augment a part-time position.

Yeah. Okay, that's helpful because I was wondering like if we were going to ask people to shift to like 11 to 4 or something. Okay. No, no. So that's helpful. The other question I have is like, is the idea then if you've got these like older ninth graders who really aren't, you know, don't want to be in a class with 14 year olds or whatever, is the thinking that then after a year of of this evening education that they would transition up?

Exactly. Okay. Yeah. So this would be like a one year, one and a half to kind of accelerate them for them to come back into our AM schedule. So if you had a, let's say a second year, ninth grader, potentially they can come back as an 11th grader in the AM portion. That's great.

And I just have one more. And this is my beef. I guess this is for all of you because this is not, this isn't in our budget for this year. So is the thinking, that we're gonna try to work on this for a year and then try to get this in? When does this launch, 2027? What is the?

Well, I mean, we still have the numbers and still the need in a district. So we would have to figure out those students and where they would fall. But again, we were late in terms of the budget. So I imagine we would try to support the students and try to work on what this program is gonna look like, like flush it out.

So it's likely that this year would be sort of a planning year and a transitional year. We'll see what, you know, some of the grants that we don't yet have come out and could be. But in terms of, like, Jamal and I have talked about this, that, oof, you know, we didn't know about this during the budget season. And so there isn't, you know, we haven't reserved funding in the operational budget for this. So we will be looking for grants, and if that doesn't come through, which it may not and likely may not, this would have to be a planning year for next year. Thank you.

Anything else? Okay. Thank you so much, Jamal. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Holly. Thank you, Jamal. Okay. We have no other business on the agenda, so I will entertain a motion to adjourn.

Motion to adjourn.

Second.

Second.

Seconded by Member Stott. Roll call vote. Member Miranda. Yes. Member Hoffman. Yes. Member Baez. Yes. Member Stott. Yes. Myself, yes. We are adjourned and I get to do it again.