The Fall River School Committee held a special meeting on Monday, March 14th, to discuss budget presentations for the Robert L. Madeira's Resiliency Preparatory Academy and B.M.C. Durfee High School. The meeting began with citizen input from Colin Dyess, who advocated for greater transparency regarding the FY23 budget, requesting its public release before deliberations. Principal Ms. Brooks presented the budget for Resiliency Preparatory Academy, highlighting its student-centered mission, "above and below the line behavior" strategies, and efforts to prepare students for careers. She reported a current enrollment of 195 students, with a significant majority entering due to disciplinary or attendance reasons. Her budget requests included converting two sub-separate classrooms into three, adding a paraprofessional, increasing ESL teacher staffing by 0.5 FTE, a new STEM teacher leader, a high school social studies teacher, and expanding the intake center with a full-time guidance counselor, a community facilitator, and an office paraprofessional. Committee members, including Ms. Laramie, Mr. Bailey, Mr. Aguiar, Ms. Rodricks, and Mr. Pereira, questioned the school's intake process, attendance rates, and the justification for new positions given existing resources, with Mr. Aguiar raising concerns about equity compared to other schools. Ms. Brooks agreed to provide monthly intake and disaggregated attendance data to Superintendent Ponce. Principal Mr. Demaris then presented the budget for B.M.C. Durfee High School, emphasizing the success of its new $263 million building, 9 CTE programs, and high AP Research passing rates. He noted the school's 87.9% graduation rate for the class of 2021, the highest ever, and a 1.3% dropout rate, placing it second among 16 gateway cities, partially attributed to the state's "modified competency determination." Mr. Demaris requested additional teachers across core academics, world language, PE, health, and ESL, as well as several special education positions (ASD, community-based, inclusion, and paraprofessionals) due to projected enrollment increases. He also sought an Early College Academic Specialist, an Instructional Support Liaison for early college and credit recovery, an additional Marketing teacher, a co-op teacher, five CTE program leads (stipends), and paraprofessionals for the Construction Craft Labor and Health Assisting programs. Mr. Aguiar questioned the "WIN block" intervention program being on pause and sought clarification on early college staffing and the student support specialist role, reiterating the need for demonstrable results from the significant investments. The meeting concluded with a unanimous vote to adjourn.
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hello i'd like to call to order the monday march 14th special meeting of the farva school committee uh deb would you please call the roll mr again here mr bailey here mr here ms laramie here mr pereira mr andrew here mayor coogan here salute to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all
0:42pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meetings through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible do we have any citizens input tonight yes colin dyess ray street deb would you
1:05please read that good afternoon members of the fall river school committee i wish to follow up on my citizens input from last meeting first of all thank you to kevin aguiar for standing up for a transparent process in the approval of the school budget right after the discussion on the release of the budget i immediate immediately submitted a public records request to the school committee for the budget and
1:30the budget summary which as to to the time of writing this correspondence was not replied to as of yet i am very confused and puzzled by the administration's response to why the budget is not released as a public record yet and to why the budget is not published on the city's website the school committee is currently on the budget deliberation meetings regarding the fy 23 budget the draft budget and
1:57draft and budget summary shows the public exactly dollar for dollar where the school department plans on expending its funds tax payer funds funds that are to use to improve to improve the quality of education for the students of our great community why wouldn't the school department release the budget and the budget summary to the public before the budget deliberations stop this will allow the public to keep track
2:24during these meetings of where these funds are going and this will also allow them to give their most accurate comments and input on those on how to use the funds when each school and topic comes up for discussion at said meeting for example if i want to see durfee have more paraprofessionals i can see how many are being funded in the draft budget i can offer my opinion to that number at the
2:50citizens input of the meeting of when durfee com comes up for discussion or i can let a school committee member know my opinion allowing for proper exchange of ideas which would benefit the school department this is obviously something that doesn't need explaining and it's obviously this is something that should be fixed like mr aguias said if we have been doing it wrong for a long time then we shouldn't continue
3:19to do it wrong the school department attorney said we are following a statutory scheme for years what law and in what statute says we can't publish the draft budget before the budget deliberation meetings that would be a good idea if we did and why did a member of the administration say a draft budget is not a public document thank you to the school department attorney for correcting that
3:48and admitting the draft budget once it's before the school committee is a public document bottom line we must do whatever we need to be fully transparent with the community whenever we have the opportunity i am asking the school committee right now to either take a vote to release the draft budget to be published so the public can follow along during these budget meetings and or develop a policy mandating the school
4:13department releases the draft budget before school department budget meetings commence from now on the public deserves full transparency and nothing less colin diaz okay uh committee of the whole first budget presentation for robert l madeira's resiliency preparatory academy ms brooks
4:43sure if i could just preface uh i know the numbers the enrollment numbers there was some question last time regarding um the we had gotten two different figures the 109 number that is on the budget cover sheet that is demonstrates the number that we had at the october first enrollment if you recall they lost evolve at the end of the school year and since then their enrollment has grown uh considerably but that's why
5:17there was a discrepancy in numbers all right so that is the that's all schools their number is the number that was reported as of october first uh mr ambrose can you just though why did we get one that said 163 because in the budget is that more current yes that was more current and as we look on it today they're up to 195. you know that are their their numbers fluctuate but
5:42the 163 was when that was questioned was the current number the 109 is the number as of october 1st and 195 is the current yes as of today thank you good evening thank you for this opportunity i appreciate it i want to start by saying that i'm extremely proud to be the principal of the robert el madeiro's resiliency preparatory academy it's something that i have thought about for many years becoming a principal and
6:12i take that role very very seriously and i enjoy working with my staff as we move forward with additional plans for our school our school mission we are a learning community that supports a student-centered classroom and we hold that description very seriously when we say student-centered and school that supports multi-educational options which provide the opportunity that each individual student needs
6:38thus reducing the dropout rate and leading those students who may not have otherwise graduated toward the path of graduation as educators we collaborate and we collaborate very often daily on a matter of fact to search for various avenues to better serve our population through rigorous instruction engaging content and curriculum and holding students to high expectations that will lead them to find success in addition
7:08we will prepare young people for the young for the real world through the use of multiple intervention strategies and programs that we lead lead them towards success both inside and outside of the classroom we will foster a school environment where we promote family and community engagement we will do everything we can to connect with students families and community partners to support us with our vision that all
7:35students can be successful through multiple alternative pathways as superintendent ponce just stated we do have a regular intake of students that we have on a regular basis as we take students from other schools and as they come into the district our current number is well was 193 we actually had some intakes today so i believe it's now 195 but my um statistics and data um reflect the 193 number as of um friday
8:04so of the students who we have taken in of the middle school group we have 63.16 were taken in for disciplinary reasons 26.31 were taken in for attendance reasons and 10.53 were taken in for other reasons some of those other reasons include credit recovery they're in need of a smaller class setting or there may be some outlying reason why resiliency preparatory academy was just a better fit for them
8:40of the high schools of the intake that for this year 52.73 were taken in for disciplinary reasons 40.92 percent were taken in for attendance reasons and 6.35 were taken in for other reasons so as i said those are the percentages of students who have come to us with for disciplinary reasons or for attendance reasons when our students come to us we welcome them we are happy to have them we look for ways to embrace
9:14them into our school and we spend a lot of time and a lot of work on being able to do that as you know there these students come to us with habits that they have had for most of their lives and breaking habits are hard so working with them on establishing new routines is something that we spend a lot of time on and it's everybody's job it's not they don't go
9:36to a particular office to learn how to behave or they don't see a particular person to learn how to behave as i said before we do a lot of work on um making sure that the students know that we are working as an entire team so i want to talk a little bit about the civic and social behavior expectations students at resiliency preparatory academy one will accept responsibility for their
10:00decisions and actions so that is one of our goals in order to help our students meet these goals we have put several things in place in the middle school in particular we have the theory of above and below the excuse me we have the theory of above and below the line behavior where there is a line literally and we take a look at when something occurs that is something that will stress you out you
10:23have several choices to make at that moment some of those choices are above the line you can take a breath you can ask an adult to um allow you to be removed from the particular area there's a whole list of different things that they can do and then we have below the line behavior and the students identified what those below the line behaviors are such as striking out at someone starting to
10:46curse throwing something etc now remember for a number of our students that is the type of regular behavior that they have come to us with so we have them do reflections on what happens when you engage in that kind of behavior and it is an extensive process it's not something that just we just do for a second we really spend time with the students looking at that and it's a very strong movement particularly in the
11:08middle school we have some other things that we're doing in the high schools um so this every single staff member refers to the students uh with the above and below the line behavior not to the students but to the actions so what can you do that is above the line that will help you to resolve this issue what i want to focus on there is the common language and the common actions of the
11:30teachers so every single teacher is taking a role in this it's something that all of them are are a part of and it's a language that the students are used to again i also mentioned that we do a lot of work on reflections and having students trace where they are right now in the situation and what were the steps that brought them there and at what point they could have done something
11:53differently so it's a whole thought process that we work with on the students and because all of the teachers are involved the students know the whole school is in on it okay so um another goal of ours is to articulate personal goals and establish priorities for learning so we every single report card progress report and report card when it comes time every single student in the school meets with
12:21the vice principal of their area the guidance counselor the behavior therapist the staff we all meet together you know in a circle and we go over the progress report many of our students have said to us that this is the first time that an adult really looked carefully at their progress report or their high school or their report card so this is something that we have in place that's a regular routine so they
12:45come to us saying when we will you wait and see when i get my progress report this time you're going to see that it's it's this now instead of that because they know it's a routine the entire school is in on it every single person and that's something that we work very very hard for um and we also work with the students on making sure that each of them know exactly where they are in their credits
13:06because some students believe that if they've been in a building for two years that they're automatically a sophomore but what they don't realize it's the credit accumulation so we do a lot of work in making sure students know exactly what they have to do in order to com be successful in 9th grade 10th grade 11th 12th etcetera so if you ever were to come to my school you'd see that
13:27any student you could stop any student they'll be able to tell you this is where i am in my credits i know now and now i've been i've been able to create some smart goals and so we have another goal there with in terms of the personal goals and establishing priorities each of the students have created are now we're actually working on it creating smart goals for themselves so academic
13:50smart goals and some goals in other areas and this is a movement that we're doing throughout the entire school so if you were it's the language of the school so if you were to stop at the school students were able to tell you this is my goal in this area this is my goal in that and that area they talk with their teachers about it they have set goals with some of their
14:09teachers in their classrooms and they're based on what are the kind of specific behaviors that they need to engage in in order to be more successful and this is one of the things that we're working on to also help improve attendance we also recognize them for um achievements in the areas where they are making um goals uh their goals come true and and they're setting goals in academic improvement character goals
14:36civic engagement and leadership and we don't just give it a name we give indicators and descriptors so that students are aware of these are the kinds of things that we're talking about these are the specific kinds of actions this is the particular kind of language that we are referring to so you'll see that the social emotional needs of the students is something that the entire school addresses so as you heard me say
14:57before we communicate often so that we can all be on the same page and making sure that the students know what what are is expected of them another goal is understanding career options and the academic requirements needed for employment and economic independence and also understanding and demonstrating in acceptance of cultural and individual diversity and exhibit uh exhibiting a respect for all we have
15:22every wednesday where we focus with the students on different opportunities we call it culture at resiliency preparatory academy um or for short quota and that's when we have an opportunity to build a culture that defines elements that we want the students to strive for some of the things that we have been able to work on is having professionals come to the school and they will meet with with different grade bands of
15:47students telling them about different showing them opportunities in different work areas we've had one of the members of the who's currently now a school board member come and speak with our students we've also had um attorneys we've had entrepreneurs come and the students have followed up with them some of them have even been able to get jobs there so what they come to us and find is a place
16:10where their interests and their needs are recognized and addressed and where we have structures in place that lets you know this is what we stand for but most importantly this is what we expect of you so we put a great deal of work and effort into that we also have had opportunities for the um the fall river pd gang unit came to visit not because of a gang issue but because we wanted them to see
16:35opportunities of when you meet someone who is the the man in blue so to speak that person is not necessarily your enemy this is someone who works with you they brought their canine officer with them and the students had an opportunity to spend a lot of time speaking with them and working with them we've had members of the military come and give the students a practice asvab test to see what it is that they would
16:58need to do to be in the um to be in the the military they think that all you have to do is um put on a uniform and you're in the military but it's a very strenuous uh type of preparation that you have to do to be in there um we've had um cultural types of different um activities for them we've had implicit bias workshops that were done for the students by the state
17:20troopers and then a lot of those things end with them having an opportunity to speak with those people informally um as i said we like to make sure that our students know that when they come to us they are embraced last december a number of the some of you and some of the district personnel were able to come and see it was an absolutely beautiful day if you weren't able to come you really
17:43missed something and i hope that you'll be able to come at another time but we made sure that every single one of our students were given a beautifully wrapped holiday present the teachers wrapped them themselves we were able to we worked with the community uh one of the churches nearby gave a donation a very nice donation and we had raised funds all the students were given a beautiful rpa blanket which was really
18:07very very good quality with the school local on it they were wrapped beautifully by the teachers we had lunch for the for those teachers the state troopers came in with their uh santa hats and the the students were they had a door decorating contest now why do we do those things we do those things to bring cheer to the students we bring those we do those things to make sure that every single
18:31one of our students has something that is um that shows care during the holiday season and at many times throughout so and when students come to our school they'd come with a lot of concerns so to speak i was going to say baggage but i want to use a different type of term they come with a lot of concerns so we try to address those things and create a very loving atmosphere
18:54so those are some of our that's our school mission and many of our behavior expectations and we will continue to do work on that um some other statistics from my school oh in addition i would like to say that these are some of the things that we're working on for attendance so they're the traditional things that we do for attend attendance such as the attendance officer we call homes frequently we call every single
19:17day we go to students houses our attendance officers regularly go to students houses practically daily if not if not four times a week we you know every single time a student comes in we try desperately to encourage them to let them know what types of things are coming so there are some restraints that we have with that but i will be uh focusing on that in just a minute attendance is a great priority to
19:44us and so we work our best to not only do the required things that are there for attendance but to create an atmosphere where the students know that they are greatly appreciated and that we want them there another thing that i have started recently is calling students for good things excuse me calling students homes for good things just this morning a parent was crying over the phone i and she was crying why
20:05because i called her called her to let her know um how her son was doing so well in the past few weeks she started crying over the phone and i said why are you crying she said because this is the first phone call that she's gotten in over five years with something positive about her son so that is something that we are doing regularly calling for good reasons that are earned and specific um
20:30i would like to also just follow up with what we oh yes the other statistics for our school we have um as you know 193 students as of friday 78 our middle and 115 are high school students in terms of the l population we have 12 12 e english language learners in the middle school which is 15.4 of the middle school we have a total of 115 high school students with 21 students being english
20:59language learners and that's 18.3 percent of the high school uh population in terms of special education we have uh a total of 44 percent of our students in our school are special education students so 150 36 percent in high school and 55 percent in the middle school so we work very hard i say that why because we are we do have difficulty with you know hiring and finding the teachers but what
21:28we do is we make sure that the teachers who are there are getting training in strategies that work very well with ell students and with special ed students so rather than leaving it to one person we know that these are strategies that have to be done regularly throughout the course of the student's work during the day so we're not going to wait until they get to a particular class period
21:52and then they'll get everything there and we do everything the way we did before when they're in the regular classes so this is something that we work on a great deal and i appreciate the help of uh fernanda very much she's been very helpful she was at my school today and also drew who's been also very very helpful and uh mr michael losh with that i would like to talk with you about the
22:15budget proposal for my school i believe you'll have a copy at the top you'll see some of the things for teacher positions and then i will talk about what requests for the intake center you'll see at the top that we currently have two sub-separate classrooms in the school one from grade that covers grades seven to nine and one that covers grades 10 to 12. we are moving towards having three
22:42sub-separate classes in the school so one will be grades seven to eight grade seven and eight one will be grades nine and ten and one will be grades eleven and 12. and that will allow for a smaller grade span of the learning um rather than have the teacher having to prepare for three you know different grade levels it helps for them to target in more on um on this a smaller number
23:06of grades and it also helps a great deal because there is a difference between a 7th grader and a 9th grader and there's a difference between a 10th grader and a 12th grader and certain things that they need even emotionally so this will help us to be more targeted with our works with our work with the students um so those are the first three at the top um we'll have to hire an additional
23:28paraprofessional so we're asking addition for additional line in that uh we have two there's currently we are budgeted for two one for the current seven to nine and one for the current ten to twelve but with the additional sub separate class we will need an additional paraprofessional for a self-contained class um we are also we have a currently in our budget of 1.5 for an esl teacher and
23:51in order to do the work that we need to do and address the needs of all of our students we're asking for additional 0.5 so we can have two esl teachers in the school um a new teacher leader and uh preferably in the area of stem because we have someone we have a directive instruction who really covers english and history so this will allow us to really zone in on our math and science classes and
24:16a social studies teacher at the high school level we currently have two english two math uh but we do not have we only have one um history teacher so that would be an additional social studies teacher for that area and we are looking at working on our intake center i told you a great deal of things that we're working on for um to welcome our students into the school and to embrace them into the
24:39school but the fact of the matter is is when a student comes to resiliency preparatory academy very often they will have intake in the intake office on a particular day on a day and then the very next day they're in the classrooms so the work that we do to embrace them and to welcome them and to set certain structures with them and to let them know what is expected has to be done as
25:02they are already current students in the regular classrooms and moving forward from there which makes it a little bit harder so we are looking at how we can improve our intake center and expand it so that there's actually a period of time that they're doing very structured and strategic work for the whole day before for for a period of time perhaps one to two weeks before being placed in the classrooms
25:26so we're going to need to um do some expansion there in order to make that happen and for that reason we are asking we currently have a guidance counselor who's doing that part-time he is in the middle school as a guidance counselor for uh half of the day and he's in intake for the other half of the day so as i said it limits us in terms of what kind
25:50of work we really want to do with students during the intake process because there really is a lot of work to do in the intake process we have to consider things such as has this student had altercations with other students other students who may currently be in our school or other students who are coming in in intake and that has to that has an impact on how we schedule them because if it's something that was
26:13really very very serious we have to look at how we're what their schedules are and how we're putting them together and that takes a lot of time and a lot of work and a lot of digging into information we have to wonder was this student part of an altercation with another student that is currently going to our school or we also have to go through what um outside community and support service
26:34services is working with the students because we have to connect with them and work with them on a regular basis and what are the learning needs of these students so it's not just a question of the student is taken in on a monday and bam we should put them in class on a tuesday there's a lot of digging and work that we have to do to make sure that the transition is smooth and that
26:53is transition that is fair to the students and is and causes as little disruption as possible so some of the positions that we are um to have in the intake center is a guidance counselor full time which would be a full position and it's a new position a community facilitator and a office paraprofessional so that that person can take there's a lot of paperwork that happens with the intake
27:23center you would be surprised each student comes with a folder of their entire heist their entire school career plus a lot of documents from outside services that they're working with we keep it working with we keep a lot of statistics on students a lot of data a lot of things so we need we want very much for the um the people who are doing the community facilitating the guidance
27:44work the family support work to not have to focus on the paper as much uh and and that that type of work so working with the guidance council what kind of things would the guidance counselor be focused on and why would that be something that would be beneficial well the rationale is that um resiliency preparatory academy has a rolling intake that occurs throughout the school year we're never finished
28:10with the first week of school the first week of school goes from september to the end of the school year so we're very unique that way all students and if we have someone there who is specific to that job rather than giving someone only a 0.5 which is what we we have now is all students can go through a comprehensive orientation into the school a comprehensive transition not monday you were here and tuesday you
28:36were there but we can take the time as i said depending upon the needs of the students a week to two to really do a lot of strategic work with the students to get them prepared we can provide wrap-around supports that can be individualized to the students and their families based on their needs the intake center can provide comprehensive supports to students during the extended intake period and
28:59throughout the first trimester of their entry so during that period of time when they're still working with the intake center exclusively they will be getting work in english where we have an english you know the english teacher come and work with them on the type of writing that we would expect to see in the class the type of work that you have to do in english class how you have to work so
29:17they will be getting content work in during that period of time also but they'll also be getting intense work with a lot of the needs that they have working through routines creating goals for themselves things that doesn't just plop them into a class the very next day but that we can actually work with them on and acclimate them into the into our pa with properly so they feel much more welcomed
29:43and then that that intake center can travel sort of travel with them throughout their first try message to see how they are really acclimating into the school we can discover and address underlying reasons for behaviors or choices that did not allow them to be successful in their previous setting and so we could start to target that right away and allow extended support time that we
30:05can give to families when they come in because families have a great deal of questions and they need a lot of work to do with us as well to go through routines as well and that will allow us that time um the um the job description for it is actually working with that position works with all of the schools in our district all of the middle and high schools in our district because they
30:28have to regularly um get information from them that as i said the information is rolling on an ongoing basis and then we also work with the local charter schools the parent center the neighboring school districts etc so that's something that they will have to regularly be working with and having conversations with um with those different um schools and um entities uh this this position also coordinates
30:52with the family support specialist duties they are a liaison to all of the other schools and the families of the students um they worked with these they would be working with dcf we have many dcf cases that are already ongoing when the students come to us and some that come up you know in the course of the school year so they would be working with them a great deal and they'd be working a lot with the
31:15parent center and also with uh durfee's registration registrar's office having this position is something that we need someone who is already has the baseline of us of being a student advocate of supporting social emotional learning and and academic growth and helping students set goals short goals and long-term goals so we need someone who really comes with that base of the academics and the support as well
31:44and the guidance counselor has the skill set to coordinate and collaborate with school principals dcf workers family advocates etc as i said before the community facilitator which is a new position i know there's been some discussion on that but we want to expand the work that we do in the community and the opportunities for students so that means you know in addition to working with families also working with
32:08support areas outside that we that give our students different support we currently have some we work very much with recreation we work with um community engagement center that we have in our school and so there's a lot of follow-up work that needs to be done there and also making connections for the students in terms of career to school to career work that we want to move our students towards as well and i
32:32spoke to you before about having the office power professional to help with organization and other areas we know that we have a lot more work to do we are already working on a number of things for next year which we've discussed with superintendent ponce and other members of the district office we um are working on reviewing the schedule that we have for students and making sure that it is
32:54truly a student-centered uh schedule and something that the that really um addresses many of the needs that our students have looking at when they have a break time during the day looking at how many classes the academic classes they go to in a row before they are able to do some other type of movement or organize strategic types of movement in the school and we will be coming back to address you at another
33:18time at a subcommittee meeting and i'm very very excited about that the members of the school are very excited about you know being part of it and even students and parents as well so that is something that i look forward to so i welcome any feedback or questions that you have now and i want to thank each of you very very much for this time i love my school and i'm happy to work
33:39with the district office and the school committee to help move our school forward thank you thank you mr brooks that was a very comprehensive report any questions at this time miss laravey hi principal brooks thank you for being here tonight uh well it sounds like you uh have the culture of the school where you where your vision is leading to um i'm excited to hear about your vision about the
34:08intake aspect because i think that school out of all our schools in the district that aspect is very very important i like where your vision is going i like the importance that you're putting on it um i would love to come in and and see where it goes but what i'd like to know is how are you managing that right now if you're asking for these positions now to to assist with that how are you
34:34managing it with the vision that you have this intake we make it happen that that i know that sounds really simple but we we make it happen we communicate often and people are doing a lot more than what their job description says um myself we are when we have an intake we have as many of us there as we possibly can the the guidance councils are there the the sacks are there the there if a teacher
35:02has a free period then and we don't we don't you know overwhelm the child but we'll come in at different points and the point of that is to make sure that they know that they're welcomed here oh you're going to be in my english class so this is one of the things that we're working on right now and do you like english and do you know or or if it's a
35:17math teacher who could be there at that time we do that so we try to set the tone the second that the child we do our best in setting the tone as early as a child gets in and i want to tell you i we have teachers who we're giving gifts to the students every single child is going to leave with a holiday present i'll help with the wrapping so what did we do they we did
35:36not ask them but they were there during their whatever free period to help with the wrapping whatever it is those are just some simple things that i mentioned it's it is a feeling of we are all in this and we we just make it happen we just do it you know we we just throw ourselves into it and we we just know that it's it's going to make a difference to the child right are the
36:02students buying into this are they feeling the the oh yes they oh yes they are first of all for things that we have already done they're like um what's happening this week with it and i just want to say one thing we don't put this work in place of um instruction i mean we really do a lot of work on instruction that i felt that was taking a lot of time so i cut some
36:23things out but i shouldn't have um i i cut things out that i figured you figured are already happening there we're doing a lot of work in uh writing across the curriculum what kind of writing we're expecting uh teachers to have and as i said to require students to do and as i said that's not left to one classroom we don't expect them to learn writing only in english we what we
36:43but we learned in the professional learning that was led by our director of instruction we expect to see that kind of work throughout the entire school day in their science classroom in history classroom etc because we're all in on it so we're doing a lot of work with instruction with the open syed with um carnegie math that comes into our classrooms regularly so i just want to say that there as well because i didn't
37:04speak about that you know before but i want you to know that is paramount but back to this um yeah we just um students teachers volunteer all of the time um the students get very excited about it the best thing i could say is and i said this before but i want to stress it again is that there's all one language throughout the school wednesdays is you know coda day you know culture of the
37:27academy culture at resiliency preparatory academy and they know that they're going to be introduced to someone who has a career that they might be interested in they they know that um they're going to be engaged in something that they may not have been engaged in before and they know so yes very very much so the students buy into it and they like it and they are a part also of planning of
37:49the new schedule they have been a significant part of it when i told you that we meet with every single student when they get their report card or their um progress report we also ask them what kind of things do you like about the way things are running what would you like differently and then we also ask them what makes things difficult for you and what things you know work best for you
38:08and that was the basis for the schedule that we will be presenting to you at another time so the students have a very strong voice in it i'm looking forward to having more student leadership that's an area that we want to grow as well because they talk about things we want to teach them how to make change so we're working with them on that but yeah they have a voice
38:30very very very strong voice it was great hearing from you good luck i appreciate you keep on trucking along those kids thank you for your kids have a special place in my heart uh and i hope to get there soon i i welcome you uh mr bailey hey miss brooks um first off i just want to commend you guys i've been you know been to the school a few times yes i appreciate that
38:55um some of the work you guys do a lot of the teachers there that i met with they're extremely passionate as you know i work with a lot of your kids in the community whether doing youth outreach you know doing voluntary programming and stuff like that i just had a few questions for one i mean you kind of mentioned that you're going to roll out a new schedule because i was going to
39:15ask you what schedule because one of my biggest things is just making sure if the kids jump from another school to rpa making sure they're actually integrated into the program a lot of the kids that i work with when they're going to rpa from a different school it's always a fear of going to rpa and it's not has nothing to do with you know the teachers there in a setting but it's
39:38a new setting if you're in your junior year high school would be no different if i moved with my family to a new high school i know i would have to deal with that but correct me if i'm wrong did you say 63 percent of the kids are there for behavioral stuff and 17 there for attendance or something like that um in the middle in the middle school 63.16
40:06of those who are who did intake came for disciplinary reasons 26.31 for attendance reasons and 10.53 for other reasons in the high school 50 to 52.73 came for disciplinary reasons 40.92 percent for attendance and 6.35 for other reasons okay the reason the reason why i asked that is because like i said a lot of the kids that i work with um you know i've been working with more kids as i
40:41uh you know came back have always the question is always hey i'm at rpa and that's why i asked about the new schedule and it's always a question around going back to the to the settings that they were at what do you know what percentage of the kids return um to like settings like if a kid were to go from any middle school high school back there's a few kids that i'm working with now
41:10the reason why i ask that is just these are things i like to relate to kids when i'm working with them especially in the community like i said the biggest things is um them either integrating into your system or being able to return to environments where they feel comfortable so so is is the i want to make sure i understand the question is it do i know how many return yeah or is that a
41:34possibility that kids return after yes okay there is um certain there have been a few cases where they have returned but i will tell you that the mo that when we speak with students the majority of them and i welcome you to come and ask them yourselves say they don't want to return they really like the atmosphere here and that you know every single week we are told that um this the parents
41:59feel that way the students feel that way and i think it's because we do a lot of work in making sure that the students know we want you not that and i'm sure that other schools do as well but perhaps there was some something that they needed that was just different from traditional and so we do look you know away move away sometimes from traditional and to alternative you know alternative
42:25approaches we know i know that there are four or five students in a grade who in between classes they need to move they need to have movement and so i i do it often myself and it's an opportunity for me to talk with them i will take literally just two minutes and walk with them sometimes around the whole not every principal can do that you know in a huge school where you have
42:49so many more students but i know that and then they they are refreshed by that i return them to class and then it's a whole different story they're not you know their different diagnosis or or needs whatever have been addressed there that i've worked in large schools where i was an assistant principal in school with over 3 000 students that that you can't do that kind of thing everywhere
43:10but but that's just one small example we know every student single students names we know so there's just just a feeling that this is the place for me and they express this and very often they choose and i don't want to go anywhere else i want to stay here so i do agree with you i think i i think i heard you say and correct me if i'm wrong that sometimes students come
43:32with you know um stress you know for whatever reasons um concerns like oh i'm going to the school it is very soon as swash and i know that with other things that we're looking to put in place for next year we'll be able to target that even even more quickly and even more efficiently we're not where we want to be yet but i think that we've made a lot
43:56of goals in this in this short time and i do thank you for the time that you've come to the school and spoken with the students and you've got to hear from them yourself that that's very important to me i appreciate that yeah i just like i said i just i'm sorry i just um wanted to answer uh have those questions answered but uh you guys do great work i've been there um
44:15like you said i've came and talked um the teachers are excited you continuously bring people in from the community to meet with them different organizations to show them different career paths keep up the great work and like i said i work i work with a ton of kids in the community and if i can ever be a help thank you i'll be here i really appreciate that thank you and thank you
44:34for the visits that you've made and talking with the students i appreciate it thank you mr aguiar hello so uh can you just define what you're calling middle school in high school is it middle school seven eight and nine yes sir we do split i know that's usually seven and eight but for the purposes in the school it is seven eight and nine for middle 10 11 and 12 for high school so
44:58just looking at numbers budget and stuff that's here so you have 80 middle school students of course 80 students seven eight nine and when you say you divide your counselor i'm assuming that means seven eight nine if you're talking the same language yes correct seven we need to divide it up yes okay and then you if you put fifty percent on the sheet here it talks about the position to split 50 percent
45:23but what i'm having a hard time is just trying to i don't see enough students in here i'm not being overly critical i've worked there before i have a background in some of this that i don't see the numbers as as high as that person's going to be active i know today you said about a week they'll be working which is different than what it's just an intake center but um
45:49where i'm coming from when i why i said i wasn't in favor of that particular position is that i think we have to look at utilization of resources and doesn't mean you you don't need a person in there or i know that over the years it's been split up so that the like if i was the seven eight and nine and she was the 10 11 and 12 at the
46:09intake i'd be that if i'm 789 i would be the one doing that intake because i'm going to be working with that family throughout so i would glean a lot of solid information rather than having a third party you know glean that so i'm not convinced that personally that that's a as far as the budget goes that that's a position uh that i would support um well one thing that i will say um to address that
46:34thank you very much i appreciate that is a couple of things the guy the other guidance counselor for the high school is always in on the intake as well to meet the family as well so the guidance counsel who would be for grade 789 who is currently the one who split between the two he would be there for the immediate intake and the immediate information that he has to get as as
46:57well so that wouldn't stop however looking at numbers at resiliency preparatory academy is is i would have to say is different than looking at at another school i know that the number of students that we have is smaller but i will say that almost a hundred percent of the students that are there are extremely high needs which is why they are there so you have uh someone who's working with um about 100 students
47:30it's the amount of needs that met that the students have there's so much work to be done uh as you know because you work there because you're familiar with the school very much and everybody else is familiar with the how rpa does intake that was the highest need at the school where they came from so they the amount of attention that they need and work that they need it may be one child but the amount of
47:55time spent with them may be i'm just pulling a number for an example maybe about about the amount of time that you'd spend with the five or seven students because it is so much work and we are working with the families you know as well so the the guidance counselors are very very very busy and it's you know the way that it works is very busy and the vision that we have for the intake
48:17center it would be a a very high demanding job lots of work to be done did you close or has the people inc family center tutoring center closed oh no it's not closed it's still there okay so that they get provide tutoring and somebody's got to manage that yes and they go into the classroom as well so it's yes the um when you look at they said 109 was the october 1st
48:46enrollment do you know what it was in september when you first opened the doors it was close to 100 um it was close to 100 i don't i i don't want to quote the exact number but it was close to 100 at that time maybe it was 109. it was i don't remember exactly off the top of my head yeah it just seemed we've had some alternative meetings and we've talked a little bit about
49:09the numbers and how easy or difficult it is to trans uh transfer students or whatever to that but when i'm looking at the number it doesn't seem uh over the month since october one like i'd be curious off maybe you could send it to the superintendent about what does the intake look like throughout the year so september october november because you probably lost some students along the way too i'm guessing but
49:40that would be just i'm curious about that would you like me to send to the superintendent ponce the numbers per month please yeah i think that would help us to at least see what um what it's look like as we've gone through okay when i look at the top couple of lines about the teachers it makes it look like you're asking for three teachers and i don't think that's accurate so what i would only
50:04i'm trying to like support you on this that if you need a third self-contained class in one power that's all you need when we look at us the sheet that looks like this that shows you what you're asking for it makes it look like you're you have to read through to to get to the idea that you're not so i don't think you're asking for too much uh right as far as the benefit uh
50:26yeah so what we wrote there was for uh the first one is actually a conversion if you see there and then the seven and eight is a conversion so techn right now there's seven eight and nine so it would be converting to seven and eight um you see in in the the third row there the 11th and 12 was a conversion because before it was 10 through 12. no i i i
50:47get it oh i'm sorry what i'm just saying is that technically that's not a conversion on this for the school committee budget so you have a self-contained class if you felt it needs to be seven eight nine that's seven eight and nine so that sort of already existed in the current budget so okay i'm looking at it as a new request and making it look like how many positions are you asking for in the
51:06budget i wouldn't con those conversions i wouldn't count personally because they're already working and if you have a classroom you need a para professional to join them so that's they go together right so i think that makes a lot of sense okay when you say the social studies position an additional social studies position and i'm not sure how the numbers bear out this might be something that you need to get to the
51:30superintendent as well but why would you not get a science teacher along with that if logically we you're looking for more than one so you only have one of the social studies so now we're going to add a second social studies i'm not sure last year they added a stem teacher so they have a science and a stem and then the social studies they have one social studies is that the vacant you have a vacancy
51:55did i see that in a budget vacant yes so how we made it without the we have um we have a um instructional support person who has been working with the students in there and the science teacher has been working with them and and and helping us that way and the students have actually been enjoying it a great deal we do use some of the work that is online and they do projects based around that
52:20so that's a sub the whole year yes yeah i know you hope to find the stem teacher but it might make sense if you can't find one and you have a science teacher that you could find you know we other people ask the same thing like we have a position that's basically vacant so the children didn't get a service out of that 80 000 or whatever as you go but the numbers should bear
52:43these out as we look at them to say this makes sense the other thing i think just for the edification of the committee too we have to look at the you have a needy population i get it the reason why we fought so hard in the past to get additional positions like the field coordinator the family support specialist the isl was due to that stuff so coming in you had some of the things
53:08that other people didn't so when i look at the community facilitator which i think is a position that some places had none the way that i see it you've been one of the only places that have actually had a family support specialist that other people didn't so i just raised that as looking at equity we numbers i i think we need to have this school within the amount of resources and the needs that are in the
53:34other schools this school needs to help the other schools take some of the burden off of them for the children that have a difficult time so i'm not being overly critical i think i look at the attendance it's not good i don't think you'd even say that it's good yeah you're correct but we got to do something with it like we have to there's so many needs but and i appreciate everything you said
53:59but we have to see it bear out that this is what's happening uh in a positive way madam superintendent i talk about the behavior therapist as we you know to put on these sheets so that we know exactly what we have and what we don't have so i consider those as sort of an sel type of position to adjustment counselors two guidance counselors 190 students to your point before about your children are
54:25needier than the other schools this caseload that we have here is way below what the other schools have as well so i'm just trying to like balance it out when when we determine a budget so um i do think it sounds like you're doing a lot i will try my best to get a day out of work where i can go down to visit but unfortunately i work during the day
54:46at the same in the school so it's hard to do but i will take you up on the offer to try to get there at some point this year with that i yield thank you thank you mr uh miss rodricks hi miss perks we haven't met yet but i i also want to come and visit i have a little bit more flexibility than mr agar does so i can run down whenever i feel like it um
55:08question about attendance do we have a sense of is it more of the younger grades that are having more issues with attendance or is it more of the upper the upper grades the upper grades do we have a sense of what's the barrier to getting the older kids in there's there's a few things and we have discussed that um some students who when they were did intake they never like even came
55:33to the school so we do the outreach the attendance officer goes to the school goes to the house we call we you know to get them to even come in there are some students on the roster who i have not met yet okay that you know and so they have just never even came in so they were absent all of the time from the school that they came from and
55:57that has carried here and i have not even had a chance to meet them so that they can come in and see some of the work that we are doing we are we go to the houses all the time we call we do every single oh i believe that so so there is a little bit of that and then there are some that the habits are hard to break you know when they come in and um
56:16we are we continuously work on that with them and um and i would say that that is is basically what it is um we want to um we want to really take a look as i said before at that intake when they come in and not be that you coming on you into kind of monday and come in on a tuesday but that we build that atmosphere that environment that they do get that initial welcome in
56:44and we think that that will make a huge difference to them you know blending into the school and you know in a more fluent way well you're speaking my language because basically what you're talking about is a full like wrap-around assessment like what supports does this kid need in order to be here successfully and to do well here right so that we can get them to continue to come through the door um so that makes
57:09sense to me do oh my question just i just lost my question it's gone there you go can i ask one clarifying just something yes sorry uh perfect timing uh madam superintendent the attendance that ms brooks talked about if a student comes to her with a bunch of absences they stay with the other school correct the absence is yeah yeah with the ascending school so if i look at this number of 90 percent um
57:36chronically absent it's that's strictly for the student at since the start of the school year i'm assuming that's how it gets carried in do you disaggregate that to to know what you're like you know i i was absent 40 days before i came to you but since i come to you i'm absent once do you have any data that indicates like once you get involved is it better is it worse
58:00um i don't have that dis aggregated date with me that is something that i can get to superintendent ponce and and and i can get that to tomorrow morning yeah because i think when that number on that sheet that pops in that's what pops in automatically from the state i believe and it would probably carry over from both for those children but truth in advertising i'd rather you know you give us what
58:22you've been able to do with them and it's not like you're going to turn a miracle in one one week but i think if everything you're saying is happening they should be there more often they should be i'll yield back to ms rodricks i just wanted to clarify hopefully she got it back i got it back um just for my own clarification what would what is the difference between the community support
58:44facilitator community i can't think of the name of it family support specialist the family support specialist in the community facility facilitator position that we're talking about yes that well it's it's kind of like right in the name the family support will really be working a lot with the families um there's a lot of um communication that we have to do with the families and i want to build as i
59:07said before i want to build positive communications with them also i want to move towards workshops with the families i want to move towards um um uh like um parent meetings and and that sort of work which is not where it should be right now and i want someone to really take you know the organization ownership of that so that is where it would be doing a lot of work with the community facilitator
59:32they'll be doing a lot of work with the school to career work that the students are going to be doing internships in the community that we want to do service in the community i want to get students out into the community so i want the person to be an organizer for that part okay so that just sounds different than how we would use a community community facilitator in other schools so again
59:52that just goes back to what that description looks like right we are actually in the process of revising and defining and having a common definition of what that position should look like across the district okay i'm not opposed to either i'm just wondering what the differences would look like and that's it um i yield mr oh i'm sorry uh miss pereira has another chance yet thank you
1:00:17thank you principal brooks it's nice to meet you i look forward to visiting the school as well um these this group this population of youth is what i've spent most of my career working with so i applaud your work thank you um quick couple quick questions relating to that that guidance position obviously we know that having a good transition for these students who often are coming from
1:00:43homes or situations that are not always stable that it's important in order to increase the likelihood of them being successful so i appreciate that how many students just an educated guest at um at your school would you say are receiving outside services due to emotional or behavioral or social needs maybe 50 or more okay that's what i would that's what i would guess um in this guidance position besides
1:01:14intake would they be responsible for anything else like let's say dealing with attendance or yes well they would be getting off this well i i i believe that the whole school is dealing with attendance and responsible for attendance so i will say that i strongly believe that um they will be doing a lot of work in getting that main that new intake group in to the building that first week to two
1:01:43weeks and really engaging them and making sure i mean it's gonna be a lot of work it won't be just them but they're the full organizers of it because i think that that is the main problem i really do uh from my um from my um looking at the whole thing i if we don't get them in there on a very positive note because first of all they were most of them were already in some
1:02:06kind of trouble they they came because they got into some kind of trouble whether it be due to attendance or something with disciplinary and then whatever um theories there may be about you know why you come to rpa whatever that's something that we are working on and and then they're going to be told that they're going to be going into a class a class that has been in place since
1:02:25september and so they're going to be the new person in that's a lot sure it's a lot and then many of them already have concerns that they're receiving outside services for working with a psychologist with working with a dcf caseworker working with whatever so do i want to walk in at a moment when something has been going on since september and be the new kid on the block who everybody knows i did
1:02:48something it's hard so i'm looking for ways to really have them come in that is more comfortable and embracing and i'm also looking at which we will share with you at a later date how we have the um the units broken up in a class so that there are natural breaks in the united states breaks but natural um perforations in the uh in the unit so that is so so that units are really done more
1:03:16neatly like that could be done in two to three weeks so that now here's a natural break for someone to come in and they're not in the middle of the book but they're at a start of the next portion of the unit so that would make a difference to the child who's coming in oh yeah on page 120 in the book so how are we gonna you know they'll see that and that alone is
1:03:36intimidating but no you came in today you know we're starting this tomorrow so so we're looking at the schedule and where we can have those natural preparations for them to come in so the intakes process essentially lasts sometimes a couple of weeks is this a situation where the scholar is going into a classroom and then maybe being removed from all work because i just want the community to understand when we
1:04:01think intake it's not when we're dealing with you know this population of youth we're we're probably not talking about just sitting down filling out one form and we're good to go as um mrs rodriguez stated we're you're trying to make sure we understand all the services and all the needs of this student correct and that would require i'm assuming a lot more time than say you know a typical student at one of our
1:04:27our middle schools with less issues yes that is what we're what we are moving towards that's what i want to move towards okay i mean i i agree with the position i think it's it helps our students and provides them with a much greater chance of success which is of course what we all want i do i agree with mr aguiar when it comes to equity amongst the schools however maybe i see equity a little
1:04:53different in what that word means so to me it means maybe me and mr hart get tickets to go to the same standing room only concert some would say that was equal i would say giving me a step stool so that i have the same view as mr hawk would be equality so i think some of our students do need a little more to actually have have equal chance of success which
1:05:20is what we're looking for thank you so much for your time yes ma'am thank you anything further uh mr aguiar yeah just to piggyback on that my point on the equity piece is if a normal school another school has difficult cases as well and their caseload is 250 to 1 for a school adjustment counselor and yours is 65 to 1 for an seo prison to me that's what i'm talking about so you're getting your
1:05:46school's already getting by having much more services and people in place than the other schools so when i say equity that's what i'm referring to it's just straight numbers other schools have difficult cases as well but their numbers are 250 350 to 1.
1:06:00so yours are down in the 80 90 per which maybe you can defend that you need more maybe you need more school adjustment counselors or the like that's a different story than for me talking about this particular piece what i think i'm not sure what their positions are but do you have a position that goes out at night after school like a wrap around outreach more different uh more like
1:06:24flex schedule or do all your people work traditionally up until the day and we have to pay stipends for home visits or anything like that it is more traditional during the day what i think would personally make sense and i think is what's lacking is that everything that we do in this school system lately is all during the day and the children are home at night with doing all kinds of things so we need to
1:06:48take some of the resources that we keep on adding we just keep on adding more resources more resources more resources and the results not there so i think looking at a position such as this you could potentially have a support person you could have a mental health professional you could have people that take the kids to the um make sure they're at their appointments with the doctors you can
1:07:07have that person also help with you could almost get a more bang for your buck in my opinion by having the person work from twelve to eight versus seven to three so that we have more wrap around services when you look at the facilitators and the community facilitators if we if we create those automatically that they're gonna work from you know twelve o'clock to eight o'clock we can provide that what we i think
1:07:31we're just adding adding adding because everybody's gonna get one well a community facilitator that works seven to three isn't going to be as successful as a attendance or community person that works after hours we could do maybe a combination of an attendance officer edition strictly for your school because it's got some of the lowest attendance that has other skills that can do those duties so
1:07:52i'm not trying to believe but these are just ideas that are in my head for i think that's good we should have we we can justify some of the spending with the low enrollment by targeting after hours different types of things coordination of care as miss rodricks always talks about so that we can get these kids in the frame of mind to be ready for school after school because when i worked there we used to
1:08:16do an hour or two of home visits after hours and they'd pay a stipend that's all well and good it was some of the best time that i ever had working there but it's only a little bit of time it's like scratching the surface you're knocking on the door where you at i'm not giving care to the children that way so we need after hours things we need credit recovery stuff that people can do
1:08:36at night so you get these kids back on track so i don't want to go on and on but i think there's some value into throwing things out there let's come up with a better if there's a better plan let's look at it and when i ask you about the attendance i'm not trying to load your school up but i believe an alternative school mission is to also assist the other schools so your middle school program
1:08:57should assist the middle schools to make those places you know better institutes of learning and if that means you have to remove some students and put them here so be it the same thing at the high school but when i'm just from the outside watching i don't think that happened as quickly as i would have liked it this year or even at in june for the next year so you start off in september it shouldn't
1:09:16always be it should be you go there you do what you got to do to get back so i just think uh i'm not trying to be critical of you or your positions or whatever i get elected to give my opinion and that's it but i do think you and your teachers are doing a lot of hard work down there with some of the most difficult kids we have so i applaud you
1:09:35thank you thank you i appreciate it okay next up thank you miss brooks next up is mr demaris durfee high school thank you
1:09:59big meeting starts after it says
1:10:07good evening everyone thank you for having me as we all know durfee high school bmc durfee high school moved into a brand new building this fall a 263 million dollar gem a crown jewel in fall river and and it is an amazing place it's a comprehensive high school right that means that we have students that are preparing for college and we have students that are preparing for career we have nine cte
1:10:35programs that i can tell you are beginning to amaze everyone just this past weekend 15 students from from our cte programs participated in deca for the first time at this level and they raised a lot of eyebrows up there in boston let me tell you with one of our students scoring the tops in one of her categories she didn't quite move on to nationals but but next year you're going
1:10:58to see that talk about ct again for a second we had three students in our visual design program placed one two and three in a national t-shirt design contest so when i talk about the cali caliber of work coming out of that program it is top notch when we talk about our ap offerings we get a call recently from springfield public schools they want to come down and see
1:11:20what it is that we're doing in our ap seminar and research program that's gaining so much success when talk about ap research our passing rate on ap research for last school year 21 exceeded national and international data at 90 percent passing qualifying scores when we look across the school the kids are beginning to embrace it let's face it as we open this school we also opened it when we just returned to learn
1:11:50over a thousand hilltoppers over the previous 18 months decided remote learning was for them so this was the first time that durfee had its full population in just like many schools and and there was an adjustment period that we're all well aware of as the year settled in and after the holidays passed attendance improved the climate is certainly much better if you walk in durfee high school now i've had
1:12:16visitors come in and they've seen that it is a different school for me when the mass came off on march 7th it felt like the first day of school to me because you could see smiles you could begin to really make connections as i look across our school it doesn't look like a place that the state says is in turn around but the reality is we're in year three of turn around
1:12:41what that means i don't know because we know the department of elementary and secondary education is looking at accountability in a different way over these last couple of years in the year forward i don't know no one can predict what they're going to to um to do with that formula but we're staying focused on that plan so when you look at the goals on the face sheet for the budget their each section is lined
1:13:05up with the four turnaround practices leadership instruction intervention and school climate many of the positions that we talked about in last year's budget were set up to push that work forward to have to be levers to drive instruction to be levers to foster accountability to foster consistency across the school to improve our efforts at social emotional learning and supporting students and improve our
1:13:33efforts at intervention so i will say that tremendous progress has been made i am incredibly impressed by the work of my associate principles in terms of one focused on instruction and one focused on social emotional learning the instructional leadership team and those would that be consistent of all of my department leaders along with teacher leaders are really looking at instruction
1:14:01what can we improve what's working what can we spotlight for others to learn from embracing the professional development of udl and the writing revolution we're poised for something big there we're getting traction in the planning we're getting traction in the instruction on the social emotional side for lack of a better term an slt was formed and this is purely voluntary but teachers across the school come together
1:14:30and they're they've organized a program of sel in action and over a hundred staff members have participated in the pilot so when we talk about spreading that work across every person in the building that is driving it when we think about intervention that's the biggest area of improvement and and we've struggled this year with implementing the wind block and we press pause on that that'll be in
1:14:57full force and designed when we open in the fall in this spring we're going to pilot some intervention specifically targeting reading and specifically targeting our 9th and 10th graders also when we look at the redesign of of the grade level structure for freshman academy and three house offices that has fostered a tremendous amount of consistency and collaboration between all vice principals working really their
1:15:26schools within the school each one of them in that they have a they have their own support teams that do the work that in smaller schools would be cut across you know the entire school these folks would be vice principal leading two guidance counselors two adjustment counselors a student support specialist a clerk and a sam um focused on the students that need the most right we're doing great in other places too we
1:15:55had a very strong winter season of sports we had two teams make it in into the playoffs we had individuals on track and in swimming and diving that made it to states a lot of records broken and i think that's testament to the the investment that the committee has made um into the sports program and then that translates into the classroom so it's really feeding itself i'd be remiss if i
1:16:22didn't mention our arts program we have several students performing and competing at the semsby level and if you want to see something special and you have time on saturday afternoon head over to case for the massachusetts educators theaters guild state drama competition where our guys our students are going to be on stage at 2 30 performing when we look at the proposals you have in front of you
1:16:49we want to build on this work we're going to build on the positivity going i have to say out loud a number that you maybe you haven't heard yet okay it's something that we're really proud of last year's graduation rate for the class of 2021 at durfee was 87.9 percent that's the highest that we've ever seen dropout rate was 1.3 percent a big piece of that is the human work
1:17:18that's gone on over the last year and a half to get students to stay in the game to keep them connected to school the outreach that happens whether it's a paraprofessional a cleric someone sitting in an office on a phone a teacher an administrator if you look at the 16 gateway cities we were number two in terms of graduation rate last year now that can't have an asterisk next to it right the modified competency
1:17:47determination that deci has allowed for with a class of 20 class of 2021 and 22 allows for schools to make sure that students are in courses aligned with the content and with the standards that are on the tests so students that traditionally have not received a diploma because they didn't pass mcas have received a diploma over the last two years if they passed their coursework we saw a doubling of the graduation rate
1:18:19for ell and special education students last year okay this process it will be allowed this year as well what the next steps are i'm not sure but it needs to be stated out loud because other places didn't apparently do the work that we did in making sure that students were made on the beam that remained hopeful and connected to an adult and they hung in there so when we look at our student population your october one
1:18:54number they have in front of you is 2347.
1:18:59that's over 150 students more than the year prior right now we're at 22.80 and that's still well over a hundred um some of the numbers that you see in the client are referrals to rpa we hadn't referred to as a single student rpa for a year and a half other than for credit recovery um so the numbers in terms of other referrals just weren't there we didn't make any behavioral referrals so
1:19:29when we look at projections for next year we're already up students we have students um in our adult learning program that are staying longer with us and staying till 22.
1:19:41we had we saw an influx of students um in our asd program coming in from other communities i think it was because they saw the amazing facility that we were moving into and then the projections for next year's eighth grade are a very very large class so with all of that we need more teachers and what you have in front of you is largely a request for teaching positions when we look at the core academics in
1:20:10addition to world language pe and health and esl there is a demand for an additional teacher for each of those departments in collaboration with with mr loche and the special education central office the projections are that our special ed numbers are going up as well significantly next year and there's a need for an additional asd teacher an additional community based teacher and then six additional inclusion
1:20:40sub separate teachers tethered to that would be a need for an additional six special ed paraprofessionals one of the things i didn't talk about a few minutes ago was our early college program we have two certified early college programs presently one with bristol community college the other with bridgewater state we are in the final steps of putting the application in for a third relationship this one with umass
1:21:08dartmouth we'll be the first one in the state we'll be the first high school in the state to have that um that designation with three separate colleges we're projecting there'll be over 400 students in early college coursework next year and that's aside from dual enrollment we've noticed and and all the data says that students can succeed in early college work in fact when you look at the data um
1:21:34our students are very successful in early college work it improves their attendance too but they need extra support and right now we are providing that extra support in many different ways and it's usually additional duties from teachers that we're we're stipending for prep time etc and this really calls for an early act early college academic specialist in our estimation in addition to
1:22:03another teaching slot we have seen great success in the student support specialist role okay this is a certified teacher who works in conjunction with a vice principal's office they have one class a day where they have a core group of students that they work with on skill building both organizational academic and then scl then they're able to be deployed into classrooms um to observe
1:22:27teachers give them recommendations for specific students help kind of with certain groupings and make give some advice to the teachers and then they these are also front line folks that help with making sure the kids get into school regularly and and with dropout prevention credit recovery is a big piece that that comes up every year and it's something that uh you know if you look at
1:22:57referrals to rpa i think we referred close to 35 or 40 students for credit recovery they simply weren't going to make it this year for graduation we're asking for an isl focused on credit recovery that way from day one every year we have credit recovery built into the schedule and we have students aware of the options they can use to to regain that credit it doesn't have to be seat time it can be online stuff it
1:23:26could be after school but i think the more that we can offer that it's gonna it's gonna improve uh outcomes for all students we're also asking for an isl for early college in addition to what i said about the support that we found is necessary for success in early college we also need to have people present on campus as we send students to these places we've had we've been remote with
1:23:52bridgewater for the last few years but i think indications are health-wise is that we'll be sending kids to bridgewater and it would be important to have staff up there as a point of as a point of contact and support for the students so we've added several chapter 74 programs over the last few years one of them being marketing right now we have one teacher in that program and our students
1:24:22because the program isn't growing and kids are hanging in there the students will never be able to reach the hours needed in that pathway without a second teacher and so we're at the point in year three of the program that there's a demand for an additional teacher one of the things that to date has not happened um in an organized ongoing and formal way is a co-op opportunity for our senior students in
1:24:51cte so we're asking for for an frea position as a co-op teacher ideally this would be someone that would have certification in either health assisting or early childhood that could be a 0.5 in a program or a point and then the other half of the of their duties would be to set up co-op to monitor students in the field also in the ct route cte realm we're asking for five program leads this is
1:25:22different than a lead teacher this would be the these are the public facing programs where we take in either students into into the pre-k or in the salon in um in culinary cosmetology there's a lot of ordering that goes on there's a lot of um who's the point person to deal with cisco to deal with the vendors that are that are fixing equipment um and this is something that if you look across other
1:25:54cte programs these are positions that do exist as construction the construction craft labor program grows we need more adults in that setting we have some amazing equipment and our guys are focused on safety and osha and all the standards they need to be but another set of eyes and another set of hands by way of a paraprofessional in that program would go a long way and then likewise
1:26:22when our students go out on long to long-term care facilities when we're talking about the health assisting program there's a need for another adult to be out there or to stay back in the classroom so as you've noticed last year's requests were a lot on counseling positions on some administrative positions and this year we're focused on getting more resources directly into the classrooms to help our students
1:26:50thank you mr demaris any questions up mr aguilar thank you for the presentation the you had mentioned that the wind block is on pause can you just explain that so the wind block what i need right hot intervention part extension when we negotiated this into the schedule with the frea the language says up implementing up to five times per week okay when we launched the year we were using
1:27:28that time to deal with the intense traffic that was going on right so we put that at the front end of the day going back to the challenges that i talked about and we're not what i'm not hiding that right we had a tough time getting kids settled into learning to following the schedule into following directions and the wind block is something that needs that needs a high level of organization and a high level of buy-in
1:27:58to to execute this is modeled after something that we learned from folks over at falmouth high school and when we called them last year to talk more about it they said let's just give you this warning we're pressing pause on our win uh block for this year and i checked with them they're not running it this i mean that was last year they're not running it this year either um because it needs to
1:28:22be flexible it needs to be if if i'm okay academically for that period of time i might go and extend my my practice on guitar or i might go to the library and and study so given the the tone of the kids as they came back to school we didn't think it was prudent to initiate it this year so when you said it was negotiated just so that went away and then it's just the
1:28:48regular classes have just taken up the time so the time here the time of that was distributed into each period so that all the classes have the same amount of time and who was going to when it was negotiated and what exactly did that mean that every teacher every staff person had a duty during that time everybody would be doing something some folks would be providing intervention
1:29:06some folks would be offering a class on how to change a tire or whatever it is that you know might be of students interest so that it was flexible you know for students they wouldn't be an intervention every day you know they might they might go to something that they're really interested in they also know they need some help with reading yeah i i appreciate and understand exactly what you're going
1:29:27through my personal opinion is when you do a cost benefit analysis of that with 2400 students in a place i'm not so it sounds good in theory but in practice it's not even i can only imagine how it would be to try to run so i totally get it and i just that's the first i heard of it that's why i asked sure you had mentioned also that you had asd students coming in from other districts
1:29:50what can you explain what that means what i know what we noticed was that there were a number of families that moved out of some towns nearby and into fall river um that entered into our asd program so they would just they moved in basically that's it it's not like they moved here for the no school only they well well yeah i mean i think that should be looked at
1:30:18both prior to as well as now i mean sure i mean typically like people move where they want to move right and that's that's yeah as long as they move that's what i'm saying so yeah it wasn't a it was look at it it just seemed like an odd statement that they came from other districts but i understand what you're saying now they moved to florida we moved to fall right we
1:30:35provide them distribution yeah so sure it's not like they just kind of we're in somerset and they came over here right they moved to fall river and then they came to school the um when you talk about the early college additional position and you said he's providing stipends for teachers doing additional duties can you just expound on that a little bit so some um some of the scheduling is okay so i got
1:31:05a class with bridgewater monday wednesday friday but not tuesday thursday and it happens during period four or five um or there's a co-teaching aspect with the professor at the college and a teacher on campus so there are different combinations of need but um with the number of students we're talking about it's like okay we'll just go to the cafeteria or go to the um go to the library if we keep the kids in
1:31:35a controlled academic setting on the days in between their college courses it's a check-in on how the students are doing making sure they're organized the teacher knows the syllabus so they know where they are in the curriculum and making sure that the kids are on track and it's currently you said by stipend so that you must have a number at some point that you could get right after that so i
1:31:59think i do want to have a meeting to talk about early college because i'm every time i say it i'm a little confused still but we can have one to drill down some of those uh those things but it sounds like you just need coverage is the real issue well coverage and and the the capacity to give the support too you talked about the student support specialist being very successful and
1:32:23what i would ask is if you could get us something that indicates what that means like so what does it look like for a student support specialist i know a little bit about it i think i was one of the proponents of adding that to one of the other houses in the past and then theoretically if it's working we should add it to all but i think maybe a one page or a paragraph on that might
1:32:45help us to understand you know what that means the cte seems like you have the numbers to match to match up with what you're asking for so i don't think it's a pie in the sky i think your numbers are actually indicating what this is is that accurate um but you told me a little while ago about the program for next year so for next year i was looking at our discovery kids who are
1:33:16currently rotating and exploring all the different programs and at this point we have 474 kids who have reported whether what their first second or third choice would be or if they're not interested in cte at all and at this point we have 17 students who are not interested in cte so you'll have the need for additional like this one 75 more staff yeah the co-op coordinator you indicated
1:33:49i don't see i think you said it was a you're looking at it as a point five or point something and then to get us started yeah as i was reading it one of the things i was saying is what are they going to do if there's not the numbers for that and when you indicated 0.5 i think that would be important to put on i don't maybe i missed it but
1:34:06well it's not from scratch i think you're asking for a staff member that's going to do multiple things if that's what i'm hearing if if it would be a let's say health assisting teacher right now we are over subscribed with our health assisting students and it makes going out on clinical very difficult because it's supposed to be 10 to 1 and we're not at that ratio we're well over that ratio if
1:34:31we bring in let's say a health assisting teacher who is also very active with the co-op program with regard to going out to clinical now that that teacher can come in and maybe do two classes and then take the kids out to clinical and have that be our first line of co-op that we can start to expand on and or maybe construction craft labor because i also see that being a big piece of our co-op program
1:34:58and then there's always early education and care although early education and care i want to keep right in house whenever we can because you know hopefully we're going to we're going to expand for next year i i agree with all that i if you take a look again at the rationale what we're asking sometimes is not articulated in here so that's why i'm asking the questions but i your answer is totally fine
1:35:22uh the teacher leads his teacher stipends is that what that it's going to be paid like a regular teacher lead is that what this means so the teacher lead is um i don't know if i don't know how in fall river it's worked i think it's a stipend that's how i understand it to be but that is for programs that have to deal with the public really that have to deal with the
1:35:47public and really they run a business and that's different than just running a cte program you can run a cte program but not have to run a formal business the granite grill is a business it is it is um it's fluid it has customers who come in we have no idea how many are coming in they have pro they have to do procurements from different vendors and to be honest with you that
1:36:12is beyond my i have no idea i'm not a chef i don't know what to order on that so somebody has to take that lead right now our teachers are taking that lead and and they're doing it because they know it's the right thing to do for the kids but we do needs a point person who can take that lead so i can go to them and say hey what do we have today
1:36:32what do we have this week what do we have going on next week we have a big banquet are we all set with cisco you know so i think that that's really important um with regard to our our public cte programs and i can imagine that they're not going to be able to do that while they're teaching the kids it's going to require after hours time correct i have no problem with the
1:36:52stipends i just wanted to make sure the clarification that it it's in addition to a regular teaching job it's not a new position from outside no bringing in somebody no it'll be somebody in house where it would be after the school day is over yeah the uh is the sports born on here is that not you that's separate departments it'll be in departments on wednesday the um you mentioned about the
1:37:17absences of better or whatever so i think attendance is always an issue for everyone including uh for your school and i think we've already asked for the data but i'd ask you to i'm curious to see what it looks like moving each month or whatever for you sure i'll say uh through today the average daily attendance is 83.80 83.8 um we attendance was horrible all fall you know and people we tell people stay home
1:37:47if you had the sniffles let's face it so we were running in the 70s high 70s when we got back from the holidays it immediately surged into the 80s we're knocking on the door 90 percent um you know our attendance we always wanted to improve it hovered around 92 93 at best um on a good year we were making strides and and so with with things feeling like they're normal right now you know the d4
1:38:13policy will be in full implementation this term and when we look at the school year up through march 2020 we were making major gains um with with attendance so that's a primary focus if we look at it right now our desi target is 60 chronically absent for the year um at mid-year as you saw on that sheet that's right where we were since then right now the projected right now is 58.5
1:38:45so so we're taking steps so now the work for the rest of this year is to take a look at the kids that we can keep from being chronically absent for the year and swarm those teams around them that i described and let's get that done right so we're taking a look at um how far below 60 we can keep that you know no i hear you my only last comment and
1:39:08we talked about this in at the ad building about the additional administrative positions and i was quite blunt with you that said i support all these positions but we need to see results and i think what you're saying today is this is now the teaching part of that comment but i would just say the same thing and i'm not being cocky i'm not being just the fact that we and we have
1:39:29invested big dollars and supports for the high school over the over the years and i've been here long enough to see that change now we need the results and i don't think you're going to shy away from that these positions i think you know are targeted they make sense but at the end of the day we just need to see the results so i'll stand by the same comment i made before
1:39:50thankfully the state has given us money that you know we can actually give to the high school but we really just need to see the results so i appreciate your presentation now thank you anything further from mr damaris i'm just extremely proud of your um graduation rate uh it's not my old stomping ground anymore that's a pile of dirt but uh it really does uh make me feel good i looked at him today
1:40:15after i had a conversation and then when you compare us to the other schools we're right where we should be again we'll see what changes go forward but apples to apples we're doing fine and again keep up the good work and i appreciate all your efforts with that being said um i don't think we're going to get too um facilities and operations tonight so our plan would be to move that to wednesday
1:40:40so we can get on with the regular meeting um i would entertain a motion to adjourn this finance committee motion to adjourn second so i have a motion a second deb please call the role yes mr bailey yes mr heart yes yes
1:41:09yeah why don't we take