3.25.2024 Special/Alternative Education & Early Education Subcommittee

we're going to call together the special education alter at Early Childhood subcommittee March 25th 2024 please call the RO Mr here Mr Cory here M Pereira M Pereira is on the way she had some car trouble the public know first to the open meeting law any CH may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any meeting attendees are therefore advised that such

recordings or Transmissions are being made whether perceived or uned received by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible we please salute the flight I the United States of America to the for it stands Nation God indivisible Justice for All no citizen input move right to the agenda we have a lengthy agenda 3.01 discussion and those are ref first special education system I I'm going to turn to speak

sessie so um sessie is Special Education Services Incorporated they are an agency that we partnered with last year um part of what we have done with them over this past year they had two classrooms at Tabet Middle School our social emotional programs they staffed them and did all of the instruction support oversight and then we have a consultation model currently at rpn I'm here to kind of

give you an update on how it went this year and what our recommendations are um for next year and principal Roso is here in case you have any specific questions related to the bottom projects so initially last year we we looked for a partner for our social emotional programs it really is because our social emotional programs students were struggling tremendously especially at talin we couldn't keep the Staffing um

and then the their social emotional needs were just greater than what our social emotional staff members could even U manage in the course of the day on on top of the rest of the school right so we looked for a partner um Mr raposo and I went out to Connecticut to see what's called an IND District classroom cesie owns hyros Which is an out of District school alternative egg program they have one in Bridgewater one

in um had one in Providence they closed the Providence one they specialize in meeting the needs of students with high social emotional needs part of what they do with districts they partner where they actually facilitate the classrooms in the students home or you know School District our goal with partnering with them this year was to actually keep students in District right we were

struggling to meet their needs but we really didn't want them to send them to OT District placements we want them to stay here what we learned is that there are just some students um you know special education students with social emotional needs that are just greater than we can meet in traditional public school and really it's very hard to meet their needs when they the buildings are

large you know they can um going to and from cafeteria going to and from an assembly or gym it's really difficult for them to maintain that emotional regulation in the mix of 500 600 however many kids uh they're in school with and in fact cesie had more difficulties maintaining staff this year than we did in our social emotional programs so out of the five programs sessie staffed in

oversaw two where our most significant students were Mr raposo had one remaining an IND District program in his building and then cus Middle School had two other um so not only do they have challenges with st but we ended up having to send five out of the um 18 students that were in that program out of District anyway um because just their level of need so I provided in your packet a cost

analysis what it would be to have our own programs return them back to District not use the um IND District classroom from sethy but being able to follow Seth's program model which again Mr opposer you can speak to in a little bit but really found beneficial because they had a concrete system of support that the students were familiar with and um no one was pulled away because they had enough support for just their

program so we'd like to propose again returning them to IND District classes that means Staffing them with our staff um and maintaining the structure that has a program um administrator to it school adjustment counselors and um the teaching staff the Paris and the teachers having to do that we also would like to keep the consultation model with cesie as we transition back to an IND

District um classroom because we do feel like they have some good resources and knowledge that they can share with our staff and building Administration to get the program to be successful our whole goal is to develop a strong social emotional program for students in Fall River um but we just need the right thought partner to be able to do that can I ask a questions quick just is

that what this is the middle the middle yep there should be and then at the end is the is the money cuz there's money in the middle too there's a budet in the middle MD is actually what their proposal would be to be able to for this for the a partnership the the one at the end is Mr almeida's cost analysis do you see what I mean so the

the one in the middle talks about the if we did consultation think it's like $100,000 for the year um if we had a one year twoe threee uh partnership with them that's the cost it would be for the district you can ignore the two teams two sites it's one team two sites because we have Tabet and um C so they're going to consult for 188,000 so they're going to consult for 188,000 and

on the back if you look at the last page the top sessie one classroom cost us $78,000 that's what we paid this year Mr Alita broke it out if we brought the staff back to our district he use the same language as they have like an administrator the social worker the teachers the Paris what that cost would be and then he broke it down based on what the District staff would select for

benefits so you see the difference from 780 down to 620 or 680 okay sorry interrup yep to help offset the cost of the um consultation or the partnership with us and then if you um there should should be actually in your packet too there's something that looks like this and this is just an example of like a plan so what we would get for a year of consultation it talks about an assessment of each of our

current programs it talks about professional development it talks about coaching um all the different facets that we need to build our strong program this is just a sample from RPA but that's what they need for um our social emotional programs in middle school if they were part of if we were to move forward with this consultation model Mr ooso um I I think really the only thing

to add just um we this year the model we had was um that cesi was running the industri classrooms there was no consultation component you know at talit specifically I know they did some work at RPA so for us it would be a shift um obviously we would be um you know running the classrooms frps side but what would be different is that we'd have some support from this other Branch

um this year cesi has a separate piece that came in and just did the partner classrooms and uh really you know onite we also have a we have a social emotional classroom at talit that is uh sixth grade um and you know when we're looking at both of those settings um you know we've been able to really maintain staff you know keep students in the room room have a lot of inclusion

opportunities for students and so we want to n that with you know um the additional two classrooms next year last year we were the only School uh that had social emotional programming in the district um at the middle school level Dorne had one Dorne had one yeah so we had uh in terms of the traditional midles and so that was part of the reason that we chose to um partner with

this organization to kind of learn from them um and in hopes that they would be able to run you know sort of an exemplary model but um I think they've faced some challenges as well just like you know we have Mr Cory so Brian in order for us to quantify it how do you qualify it I mean the work of the how many adjustment counselors bee so I have four total um I have one

counselor that um I task with serving my sub substantially separate population and then uh one counsel per agre is the one working with the substantially separate population skilled in that uh that particular individual was formerly a special education teacher including in a substantially separate classroom that's good sir is it is it I know I know there's issues that tell that I hear about it you know

frequently so is it is this something that works with your strategy already in place like when you set up when you're in your war room and you're setting up your school strategy and you got all your seal plans on the board and everybody's working those plans in the school what does cesi add to that do you mean currently or if we were to move to this consultation model next year currently what you have now just so

I can get a a face so they run essentially it's it's almost like having a separate program within a building so they have a director of operations on site um they have have two teachers they have their power professionals and they they have a full-time social worker position which is vacant right now um but they that's what they would provide uh so it would be similar model to what we

provide it's just that they're providing that level for you know 20 students are you telling me this is almost like an an in school Auto District placement so to speak if that that's my own language like instead of going out of District or going collaborative is is this another model along those lines so students on their IEPs would still be considered substantially separate so it wouldn't be

that they require like you know a day school placement or anything like that um so it would still be students that are substantially separate they're just coming in and running the classroom in the district one of the big differences from I know some other organizations that do this is that um it's not like we would necessarily accept students from swans or you know from another District

it would be F frps students only um and their staff is running in that program yeah I didn't mean that we would to take in other District kids but but in the way that they the service that they provided is similar to what you might see with an out of District placement um I I would say maybe not with that level of the students with that level of need is it similar to what

you might see at a collaborative an IND District classroom is similar to a collaborative setting or an out of District placement in the sense of the staff has specific ific training with that population and it's not just a special education teacher without that background however in a collaborative or um a day school placement they have no access to typical peers right so the purpose of an IND

District classroom is they still go to gym they still go to Art they still go to all those unified Arts with their peers they go to lunch they do all those things so they're still part of their school Community but their classrooms they get a high level of social emotional support um um in structure they have like a point system that they use and all of those pieces within the IND District classroom that is run by

someone with greater expertise things go wrong uh and uh how is discipline handled with with cesi how do they handle discipline so um they have a director on site uh but I do um ask that they consult with me if there's going to be any sort of suspension of a student and so that I have because I'm the building principal um and so we collaborate with that piece uh but their director will be the immediate Point

person to handle a disciplinary issue and then I typically will become involved um if there's going to be a suspension um if a student were to be physically managed um I would have to be notified as the building principal as well um and so we do we're often um collaborating with them around like serious student needs throughout the day okay so as far as your discipline I'm just trying to learn again

okay um so I'm asking question so I could refill get more familiar with the situation in our schools so I like the idea of restorative justice in disciplinary cases but I wonder if it's at the cost of consequential action when when consequences are definitely needed so how do you deal with that um you know we utilize suspension if we need to utilize suspension it's really a case bye how are those numbers that dat

around suspensions is it going up is it going down I say right now um you know right now my numbers are um my numbers of suspensions for students with disabilities are a bit higher than my aggregate um and really you know when I look at who those students are they're students that are sitting in social emotional sort of settings that have you know really high needs um and at times

they you know there there might be uh uh an in that takes place that we really do need to utilize suspension just to keep everyone safe and and um you know and utilize that as as as the means um we try not to but it is something that we use I think it's necessary I mean I think consequential action is necessary when a kid steps out of bounds I really

do um the other piece too with the consultation model that we're looking to bring in is also consistency across the district right because we need the middle school programs to have a consistent level system to have a consistent language we talked about like the way that we're interacting with students to best meet the needs of these students with social so is that something cesi would provide along those

lines so I was at RPA last week I saw I met the two gentlemen that were U preparing for their consultation at RPA I didn't much know what they were doing except that uh Mr Riley pointed them out to me um so I was just curious I don't I've never heard of a model like this you know and I just needed to ask those questions so so give your assessment

Brian so what do you think do you think it's a good move I think we should C I mean I I've work um you know collaborated this year with special education with cesi I think that um it it makes sense to move to a consultation model um I think having right you know we struggled at the beginning with the fact that these are still uh students in our school for our Public Schools so for

instance we need to ensure that they have access to the same curriculum the same resources they're taking the same assessments um you know even just in terms of like IEPs and that whole process so I think if we can learn from them and utilize the consultation model uh we can still meet students needs you know within within our own um program if we design it the right way about the school teacher feedback in your room

have have the teachers noticed at least a little bit of a difference having has it has it relieved some of the uh the regular teachers you know so I think because it still runs so because students are still substantially separate um that uh some students are being included at times throughout the day for core classes but um these you know many of these students are not full inclusion all day long they might they

might be out for a class or two um I think that obviously having a a system with a director and a social worker is essential because we know that we're working with students that have already high social emotional needs so if we are looking to recreate a structure that makes sense next year we just have to make sure we're Staffing it appropriately because we know that we're taking students that

have really high social emotional needs and putting them you know into classrooms uh so I think you know we need another layer of support uh because those are you know unlike an academic need um when a student is struggling socially and emotionally that's something that's sort of in your face in that moment that you have to deal with right away right so it's just important that we you know we we stop it the right

way my last question are you getting any parental backup or guid you know any uh any adult backup from them their parents or their Guardians um we have not spoken to families yet necessarily about um you know as as we're not making any changes right now but their parents are involved like any other parent so they're still attending IEP meetings those are all school-based meetings um so we have the same level of

communication that we would have with any other family we have with students in assessing program as well thank you a the uh when they had discipline did they put it in this X2 or power school or how does that work yes so yep so they do it in uh Aspen any sort of discipline um same thing with attendance student attendance all that sort of stuff and 20 students was in the class 20 class there

are total uh spots 20 right now there's a total spots we started we had I believe um throughout the year we've had 18 students um our enrollment is low right now in that um program um you know we have a student who transitioned recently from a school in the district and then we have um a student who's supposed to be transitioning in from another District that hasn't started yet

yeah the um I'm just looking at the last page the cost analysis so 780,000 20 that's $39,000 per student and I think that's pretty substantial now less kids makes that number go up even higher and then I'm trying to figure what the the point of this analysis is and I'm having I'm a little bit of struggle but when cesi came in last year what where was it paid from was this paid for on a grant what

where did the $780,000 that is in here says current year was $780,000 I don't so want to missp on how we how it was funded I can find so the reason why I'm asking that is try try to figure out what I was here when we said we were going to go out for them and I think it sounds to me like it was a failed experiment if I'm being just brutally

honest and if the everything was flat the discipline was flat what did we get for the money that we paid so knowing that it makes me sort of take a pause and say do we really want to give the same organization that came in and didn't necessarily deliver what they said $200,000 and I'm not totally understandable and I want to say that this is a separate branch of the organization so the the group that does

the IDC classrooms is separate from the consultation model where you met um their director over there I can tell you we don't have the impact results on with RPA yet but what we've received as far as the consultation the recommendations the assessments at RPA is spoton now is our job to do the work so that's why recommending to move over to this consultation team for me is um I can I feel confident making that

recommendation because I see what we've gotten for this um for funding it at RPA again it's on us now to implement that piece there's nothing that any outside consultant can do for us when it's our job to implement but this is a different group then and I and I'll be totally transparent when we went to go see the students in these classrooms we thought wow if this can be brought to Fall River

we keep our kids in District that was my goal keep them in District what I learned throughout this year is that those students that we saw did not have the high level of need they are our typical social emotional students that we do it it actually gave me some confidence that we can do this work there's going to be a high a number of students Mr agar that I we can't meet

their needs and that's okay there are programs for those kids and we should be confident that once we say we have tried everything to keep them in their home school district um in the least restrictive environment that we can confidently say we need to look elsewhere so yes it wasn't it didn't give us what we intended and that's why we're not recommending continuing with them right that would be um you know

poor judgment on our end but it was not a bad decision I don't feel to try this because it meant we kept those kids in District because at the end of last year we wouldn't have been able to even sustain the kids that we did seem sustain right we have 13 out of the 18 that are still with us so I have to think that that was beneficial in some

capacity yeah I just think it my first reaction is that it was not a great experiment uh this on the last course the sheet here says 6 780,000 we don't get any we don't see anything else so I would recommend when this goes to the full committee that you break that out so we know what did we spend on the cost for that later on it breaks down program director 120 so we're hiring under your

recommendation we would be hiring $120,000 program director that's just a placeholder for the structure so if we we would not have a program director because we don't have that type of model in here would we want to have um either a an administrator whether it's a cluster coordinator a supervisor whatever we've been tossed around like a VP that to meet the needs yes we're recommending the same structure that's

why I asked Mr almea to put in some placeholders as to what the structure was cesie calls it a program director that's why it's listed in there right but this is if I'm reading this right the this last page is for us now for sessi so what I'm saying is this is yes confusing because it's not telling us what is really what you really recommended so now we already did the budget how much

is in the budget what what are the positions in the budget what are the yes so what Mr Al needed in the current budget he included the information and I wish he was here to make sure that I'm not miss speaking but as if we were going to do cesi again next year so that's already in the bu 780 is is plac marked to be able so the the fun funding

is there for the 780 we're requesting to bring that back to in District staff and create that structure that you see there now again with a little bit of flexibility for example the social worker um Mr raposo already has social worker that he would utilize in that program but he might need some additional social emotional support like anele on instead of that in order to make the the structure fit we're looking

for administrator we're looking for a social worker or the seal support and then the two teachers and four Paris that's what we're looking for but it's already in the budget under that 780 that's what we got for the 780 you got 20 seats and that Staffing which right sir what's the difference between the social worker and adjustment counselor they call it yeah yeah yeah same thing yeah so they call

it a social worker that's what they call it in their program and so they're going to have a social worker come in right away at 100 Grand no no no that that was just a placeholder from Mr alme all right we would hire a school adjustment counselor should we decide to go that room right we would hire our own staff he put a placeholder based on our salaries all right so what we would

likely I mean what our plan would be is that if I think talet would likely have three classrooms next year uh total social emotional classrooms as I mentioned I have four School adjustment counselors so I would basically just have one school adjustment counselor that would be assigned to those three rooms with that high level of need um because you have students almost every single

student there is going to have services with a you know with a social worker given that they're social emotional students plus you know running any other groups um and then just responding to crisis you know as needed as it arises throughout the de so we would likely just have one person service those well you said you had four before you you're not coun this plus this uh I have I also have language

based so I so the way I structure my building right now to be clear theirs is also vacant so we've also but I'm looking for like numbers in the budget so you would have four plus they had their own staff that was from them we paid them not we didn't pay the staff yes so is there nobody left that's going to stay like their staff are gone their sta their staff right now they so there is

no social worker there um but they don't work I mean the staff the teachers the whoever else they're theirs they bring them on board they're their and they're gone they're theirs yeah they'll leave at the end of the end so they maybe they'll go somewhere else in they organization you know I don't know and we didn't to be fair like we didn't cut positions when we brought cesi on board

last year those positions got were shifted because we needed to grow our own program so we we opened uh class room at D at um cus so the doring classroom went to cus and then we opened a second classroom so we're able to take the existing teachers and staff calet was short staffed anywhere last year and where if you had three next year where are the other classes c c is still

keeping and doran's no more Doran doesn't have Middle School they have still have two classrooms but I think it's K to five yeah they have three so the only other classroom is in cus so you have the middle school programs are now all between one at cus and three over there for next year two at C and three and what is the Staffing model of cus they have a social worker similar to

what Mr raposo has they have um teacher and Paris I'm sorry two par yep two Paris a teacher in each classroom they have our cluster coordinator shares part of that is her responsibility and then there's a supervisor that goes between cus and talit right now but for all the programs not just social emotional I I'm not opposed to you have to service the kids I get it I just think it's

confusing I'm still confused what I would recommend for the full committee is that we compare what it is and I've said this every budget meeting that we compare schools so I'm not going to vote to say we're going to give Mr reposa 780,000 for three classes and not the equivalent of that at another place we're talking about a boss a cluster coordinator that person was there for that not Shar not all this other stuff

so getting all those details out basically we're not going to continue with sessi you're going to run these program programs and then you come to us with $180,000 consultant contract the way I would feel more comfortable sure it's less confusing to the full committee so we say we're going to do it in house this is what it takes to service this is it really doesn't matter these numbers

don't they're confusing but they don't really matter per se in that you say what you need in order to service his program but then you want to make sure that the other schools have the same and type of uh we've met when we brought in um the consultant group of St to develop this proposal it was Miss Ru and Mr Roso and myself so the three of like the two schools were together

developing this so we currently paid you you can get that number $45,000 per student at the talet if we look at that the numbers for the Year this past year this past year what is it going to be next year when you're go into the full committee I would present that number so now we're recommending that we spend if we just spent the same amount of money can we deliver the same

services or better it it really doesn't matter about the savings and then I think they're just trying to J I think this is to try to justify us to to bake a consultant into the thing and I'm just saying stop from scratch yeah say what you need and if that consultant says we need 100,000 then you go to them and say we can offer you like these pieces of it versus being pigeon hold into the 180

yeah yeah yeah I okay that's fine I will certainly break that down that was my CU I'm the one that asked U Mr almea to give us what we paid for sesy and if we did the exact same model in District what would the bottom line cost Fe and that's the difference between the 780 and then the 621 at the bottom like that's that's exactly what I asked him to give me was just the difference in

cost if we had the exact same structure for our program and that's talit and cust programs because we already have the other staff the only additional teachers we need are the ones that are leaving from sesi yeah but I will break it down for you that's totally fine I mean and maybe any data that you have relative to I know I've asked for disciplined data across the district I'm still waiting for but

yes these programs would be having that might make some sense to we we did pull that data here's our only I mean I'm happy to share that the um the issue we ran into is that last year we don't have comparison data so I can give you the data from this year but we had difficulty and again Mr ooso can speak more to that pulling the data out of um

Power School versus ex but we have all of the she but we have all of this and I can give it to you from cus too for sure I think the whole committee would benefit from Y at least getting something you have any other questions yeah I do suree I'm glad you asked those questions on Mr a because I I was looking at this and I couldn't quite understand this financial breakdown either I mean the

numbers it's everything is expensive today all these services are expensive so I just want to make sure that if we're going to invest x amount of dollars into an extra service that we're going to get some yield out of it I'm going to get something that going to help the principles of these schools because I realize what the population is at these schools Mr ooso your district

is it the same as f is um when you look at the district so yeah fansa and Watson are my two major feeders yeah so your District goes from the wupa pond to the Taunton river right now are you drawing kids all the way like from Cherry Street and stuff like that no not that far how how how far west is your District does end it about Robison Street or something like that street Robison Street yeah

Robison that's still a huge district for a middle school so I I know what it's drawing know I Want I Want To Praise um you know Dr B and and and principal C yourself cuz you guys have been holding the line on on heavy duty issues you know for a while she did a great job at Henry Lord when she was there you know she worked their butt off so um I mean

we we have to respect the requests that you guys are forwarding to us we just want to make sure that it's not going to you know blow our money out out out the water and that we're looking at it really close so looking for a motion to refer with the information no information we don't have to vote positive or negative just refer it to get it to the full commit

okay yes that's a motion second all in favor I yes so we'll move that on to the full committee hopefully discussion with a discussion and then we'll right and then it'll you'll send the information and it won't be a positive or negative just cuz really it's not even we don't have to vote necessarily on it because it's a one-year plan that's over so when you look at it what's the votes we really

not voting on anything other than to let you do what you got to do does that make sense I never know I just the CI was a onee right right so it was only a one-year pilot that ends on June 30th so what I'm saying is we don't necessarily have to vote to that's already ending so now it's just like you're going to come to us with here's our new design and we're

going to recommend a consultant so the cessi piece we don't want to vote to stop them when we don't have to it was just a one year next up three thank you 3.02 Virtual School Madam superintendent yes so so um as the committee we've been looking at um options for our students um uh alternative options and um Dr B and um Mr Woodward have um been leading the charge here we actually have met with

multiple districts that have entered this Arena and created uh started small created um these Virtual School options for students who don't really um fit the traditional model and um uh you know uh there's a process and we want to bring this the the first leg of this journey here and then go to the committee because that's there's a um you know an application that needs to be filled out

um for desie so that they can give us some input and some feedback Etc so that by the end of the year hopefully we go on on that trajectory so I'm going to turn it over to Dr B and to Mr Woodward as um they go through their presentation for I just ask one clarifying question the timeline in here said I thought I read it was going to be May

uh like are we is this it to forward or is this uh do we have more time to have excuse me multiple meetings or is this just a well this is the first step right so we're hoping that um because we're going to be asking for a vote because they can't uh desie we will apply by April the next week um to fill out the application right we wanted to we don't technically have to come before

the committee until we need a vote we want to make sure that we let you know we are applying we are exploring this option we're going to put it before you we want to bring it before the committee and then there desie will give us feedback on the application we'll make our adjustments and then we'll bring it before the committee in May so that um our finalized plan so that the committee

can actually vote on it because we do need a vote of the committee in order for Jesse to approve the plan so is it on the are you looking for it to be on the agenda April 8th simply because well not not for a vote April 8th but for us to let the committee know that we're applying this is what where we are when's the meeting is it April April E8

right so before the 12th you want to submit this to the full committee yes that's all I just wanted to make sure we know what we okay so we have begun looking at a number of different alternative options here in the city I want to start with that um that really our our energies here are focused on creating multiple alternative models in the city um we know that we

have the evolved program up at dery um I know there was a meeting last week I unfortunately was not able to be present um but we are looking at the Evolve programming and how we continue to explore um the growing of the Evolve program we now also realize our partnership with bar please correct me if I'm wrong but that will be sunsetting and so opportunities for us um to really explore a 9 through 12 potential model

for bar uh for evolve rather certainly on the horizon as we think about our support down at RPA we just spoke about sesi and the work that is going on with principal Riley down at RPA supporting the development of the team and the programming and the program of studies moving down at RPA so we can continue to grow and evolve that program at the same time we've also noticed an uptick or at

least it felt like it was an uptick of students that were enrolling in home school and as we began to take a look at some of the data um in the district we had a a number of students who have formally dropped out of school which we know we always have students on our Dropout list and we are constantly looking at ways to reengage students to meet their needs as well as students who

are growing a growing enrollment in the tech Academy which is the Massachusetts Public Virtual Academy and as I mentioned our homeschool students so as we looked at those three populations of students currently we we we were not looking at currently active students although we do believe that if the model evolves in in our vision that there will be currently active students who are not finding

success that might be eligible for this program so while we're starting with those three buckets of those three groupings of students and exploring through those three groupings of students we do believe that there are additional students across the district that would look to take part in this program so that being said you know our first step in the process was to research and learn across the state of

Massachusetts around the best practices and the virtual schools that do exist um just to understand what the landscape looks like um and I'm going to pick it to Mr Woodward to review that section sure uh thank you Dr b um so just to tell you a little bit about our journey and some of the research that we did over the last you know couple of months as we're exploring uh the virtual

school option as a potential pathway for our students and we started just doing some general um uh research and um just highlighting RTI International which is a research organization they highlighted 10 key kind of like best practices in uh virtual High School models and um just some high level themes that you know we noticed or that I noticed uh to bring to your attention um is that collaboration

communication and feedback uh we definitely huge pieces um of effective practices in Virtual schools as well as making learning kind of relevant and personalized and if you look through kind of like those 10 best practices uh it would probably be very similar to something you would find in a a physical school or a traditional school for a successful school so even though the virtual school as a whole it's not in a

physical location the students aren't learning in one classroom together they're going at an individual uh individual Paces I think some of the best practices are similar it's just the implementation that's going to look a lot different um so we kind of kept that as a frame uh as we continued our research um and we met uh with five out of the seven uh schools in Massachusetts um for kind of a Q&A consult um session

so that we could learn more about their Journey um and some some of the things that uh we learned from that from them is that all of these schools are in like the init initiation phase um they're all within one two or 3 years of implementation after Co so they're all very small they haven't really gotten it exactly right yet they're still transitioning they're still making an adjustments um there uh all five of the

schools that we T to their models were uh somewhat different uh so it was not just like one size fits all that we could just take home and maybe replicate in um in Far River it was really kind of personalized to their District or what they thought their students uh uh needed uh most of the schools did start um High School only there was one school district that we talked to that actually

had a k to2 model which was in Springfield that was the largest model um but most of the school districts that we as both do were 9 to 12 and they all started very small with about 20 uh to 40 students in their first year and then gr from there 20 to 40 9 to 12 okay correct um yeah some of the research kind of says that 1 to 3% of students is

really um the right fit for a virtual school model that a lot of students who are off track or maybe disengaged uh wouldn't be successful in a virtual model so it's like it has to be the right type of student uh when we're enrolling uh uh to make that a successful pathway for that student um some of the the high interest um from students breaking it down to categories

uh just to share with you um the rising ninth graders are students starting High School experience was kind of like the highest if you would break it down by grade level at the virtual schools TOS who were transitioning into their model um they also had some students who were older who were working uh and only needed like a couple classes uh to finish their High School uh diploma um

students with medical issue either uh physical or the anxiety or sociophobia is another category of students who tended uh to have interest uh in the virtual schools um all of these uh single District virtual school they had their process kind of start with a comprehensive High School school like the high school referred students uh to the virtual school and then the Virtual School staff kind of reached out s it

interview some schools had um formalized applications some schools were much more informal um but it uh started at like the traditional high school so for us that would be proba there RPA um and the and the schools had an opt-in model um students weren't required to go to a virtual model in any of the five uh schools that we talk to however each of the schools did say that uh they did

have some students um who were excluded from school either uh for medical or uh for other reasons but um the student for legal reasons um opted into that model to receive their education they weren't forced or required to uh go there um and again the Staffing models also varied obviously different number of students per School most of the uh most of the schools had um like at least two

full-time staff um all have that principal was had a counselor type position and uh the teacher model uh were a combination in full-time and part-time uh staff that were either select from another school top two classes in the virtual model or some programs had full-time teachers in the model um some of the schools also used um the edity platform to uh be the main uh uh teaching staff and and use

teachers more uh in the in the T kind of in the tutoring realm where they would hold office hours and check-ins but not do the actual live instruction um just a little bit more about uh some of our learnings um there was uh an all schools there was a mix of live kind of like required check-ins and then on on demand Independent Learning and the school said that was probably like the biggest plus

was the flexibility for students and when they completed their learning um so was and and most of the schools this huge time commitment like a traditional High School had to be in front of a computer from 9: to 3: there was some check-ins it varied and then students went off on their own to uh complete uh uh their coursework through the uity platform um with regular check-ins um the school's also reported

that family family and parent Connections in relationships were the uh the key to um students being successful ful and that all all of pretty much all the schools were still struggling with attendance in the virtual school model uh so students who were in the past chronically absent it was still a struggle uh to get them uh to do the live check-ins even if they were completing their their

coursework so that was just kind of a summary some of the research and some of the focus group information we learned um from the schools again about the Springfield virtual Toton virtual cleor virtual lemonster virtual and Chelsea Virtual Academy I'll kick it back um over any questions are you done wait until you done yeah that's the first part of phase one do you want to ask um boy you got

more to talk about just a couple yeah go ahead okay um so the second phase of our research was around our students in Fall River to take a look at those three groupings of students our homeschool students the four of a public school students who are currently attending Tekk as well as former fora public school students who had dropped out last school year um our first approach was to

leverage a Google form interest survey um from the interest survey we yielded 30 responses um we sent it out to all of the families um of those groupings that I spoke to had very minimal response rate to the survey um some of the trends that did result from the families that completed the survey uh were the the interest around 77% of them indicated they were interested or very interested

in a virtual High School which was pretty promising um the trends around why they were interested flexible scheduling able to complete work from home were some of the biggest interest reasons length of school day safety concerns and social anxiet anxiety were some of the barriers to the traditional model that students noted as well as students and families mainly requesting a hybrid model of live instruction and

tutoring um joined with on demand independent work when we were requesting some feedback around the types of program models they would be interested in from there we we made direct phone calls home to connect with students and families because the survey did not yield strong enough outcomes for us um so we took two weeks our administrative assistants were totally committed to making direct phone calls home to every

student on the list and then followup phone calls uh to be able to collect some additional data so 35 out of the 48 grade 8 to 11 homeschool students were reached for a virtual telephone survey uh 54% of The Homeschool families indicated interest in a Virtual Academy and Trends from their responses specifically were um students enrolled an online school uh they were happy with that

education and safety bullying concerns and mental health challenges were major reasons why students originally shifted into the home school option to begin with as we we then met with um and did Outreach to our Tekk students 14 out of 35 grade 8 through 11 Tekk students were reached for a virtual survey um eight out of 14 57% indicated interest in a Virtual Academy and Trends from their

survey responses flexibility and schedule is key and then another interesting piece is that students who are at tekka were gener genuinely happy with their experience in Tekk so a number of the Tekk students were actually not interested um in returning back to the district because they're finding success in that online model and when we connected with our students um who had dropped out during

last school year uh we were able to connect with 58 out of 151 grade 8 through 11 students who who dropped out um 40 out of 58 of families of students who dropped out indicated an interest in a Virtual Academy Trends from the survey kind of consistently flexibility and scheduling length of school day uh one other thing that came up was just the postco challenges to normalize School attendance Behavior was extremely

challenging for some of our kids um and other students were already enrolled in different alternative programming whether it was youth build highet um or had completed their high school diploma since dropping out in addition to the interest surveys and the telephone calls um we have also begun our focus groups we had a focus group last week um we actually have another focus group tonight that um Mr Woodward will be

attending and in the focus groups trying to dig a Little Deeper around some of the program design and some of the responses that we did receive from the survey to speak with families about those responses and both virtual focus groups um daytime and nighttime focus groups were scheduled to try to create appealing times and our on our questioning during the focus group was really about interest in a Virtual Academy to

understand scheduling structures the student support that they thought they would need and the community building that families and students would expect to be a part of in a virtual school world and so now as we think about recommendations and next steps um our our October 1 enrollment will drive funding growth next year for Sy y26 our vision for this virtual school will in fact include some sort of lab

class space we want a place for the Educators and the adults connected to the to the virtual school to come together on a daily basis and build that school Community as well as working with our students and families to create opportunities within our program of study to bring our students in um to have that social connection to develop those social connections with our kids we've been um really thinking about the

program design and how we can ensure that the credits that kids earn ER are relevant talking through what a Capstone project could represent and how that potentially could have opportunity for Community engagement Community partner Outreach and and partnership and so we feel that we do need a lab space a lab class for the virtual school um so that we can also create specific experiences for the

students in a virtual setting but also have a common place location that they can refer to as a meeting ground um some other points of just notification that it it is a standalone School desie requires us to have our own school code for a virtual school so we can't embed the virtual school to a dery or to an RPA because it does need to have its own school code um as we're

thinking about basic Staffing to launch a program based on our feedback and some of the feedback we've received um looking at a principal to oversee the program all things recruitment retention and engagement as well as um a duly certified School adjustment counselor SL school counselor to support with College and Career ex exploration as well as meeting the social emotional needs of

the students within the program and then looking at potentially one to two teachers really thinking about meeting individual student needs so students with disabilities or ESL students primarily focusing on providing direct support for for students in need of those Services um the platform that we've looked into with Edgenuity is the uity with instructional services and that instructional Services component is

the overlay of um Edgenuity providing a teacher providing the monitoring of the coursework of students being available for virtual help sessions for the students knowing that we're going to have a range of grades and a range of courses that kids would be enrolled in and because we're only starting out with a smaller grouping of kids we felt that leaning into the more robust programming

within Edgenuity would be the way to go for year one um so that we can provide the other elements and develop the other elements of the virtual school model and using a Google suite for virtual checkins Andor therapeutic support and or tutoring depending upon what the student is able to do and how we are able to work with the student and families to live up to the virtual High School model but also provide supports

in person as needed depending upon the students needs um and so the timeline is is is next listed you know as superintendent Pon had noted the application is due to desie uh by April 12th we thought this was a good opportunity to bring forth our concept and where we've been with our planning um as we then could potentially follow um and wait to hear back from desie around final approval and then that

would come the end of May so and just just to add on on to the timeline after death desie will provide like feedback to the initial application is it's kind of a draft to dese they call it an application uh but uh you submit your plans it's pretty detailed and then they give some pretty specific uh feedback on uh things that they're looking for or things to strengthen um

and that's the May 10th uh May 24th and then on our ideal timeline if we have support we would come back to this committee um at the end of May uh to give a more detailed um presentation about our our final recommendations Etc and then I ideally um the next piece would be a vote which would um potentially have been at the June school committee would you come back to this subcommittee yes correct okay any

questions Mr Cory I have questions so I mean this represents progress I realize especially in the face of postco Education um this is is this a public school version of homeschooling is that what this is is dis like homeschooling public school style I don't know that I would say it's homeschooling Public School model um I do think it provides a structure and a support for some of our hom school

students although there are a number of homeschool models that are out there that families have the option to partner with um independent of the public schools as you know but I what I think what we see this as is an opportunity to create an alternative option to keep more kids connected to the four of the public schools and on track for a high school diploma um students will still have to

pass mcast currently under this model they would still have to earn total credits for graduation we would have to create a program of study as part of our planning that the school committee would adopt that's part of the application process um and it's considered a stain the loone school get Standalone school what about what about school activities after school activities clubs Sports theater that

kind of stuff well I think that those options are available even for our homeschool children if they want to take part in um after school activities they're allowed to then so once their school day is is done then they can come on to campus to take part in those activities what does it what does this mean for teachers like uh how many teachers would it take you know to run a

program program like this would it be one teacher for a large group of kids of course everything's it's all Google Classroom is that correct the whole thing would be Google Classroom so we're further exploring the uity in the instructional practices program and so as instructional Services Program which is part of the uity program that we currently utilize so this would be an online

platform instructionally sound standards driven with with through this instructional Services piece we would be paying for the teacher support for any kids that are enrolled in the program so the teachers right now that we're looking to bring on board to get started with would be a special education teacher and an ESL teacher assuming students in the program require those Services otherwise currently we would

lean into uity and leverage the services that come with the program that is more enhanced than the current uity platform that we are using right now we purchase just the courses our kids interact with the courses independently on demand we run uh lab space up at the high school where there are a couple of Staff around to help support and guide kids through the program but there is not live

instructional support and that's what we would be looking to add for this program to add that extra layer of teacher and instruction into the students day and into the program on demand would there be a referral process uh for a child to become part of this virtual learning the referral would come from what the counselors the teachers the principal yeah we we have to finalize that plan still but in all of uh the

schools that we spoke to it it started with the district uh parents sometimes said that they were interested in the virtual school but the actual referral itself came through the high school either through a vice principal um counselor any idea projection of numbers just a a rough idea 30 students 40 students I think that's about ideally where we'd want to start in the 20 to 40 range to start small

make sure we get some of those structures and systems um going and then um learning from some of the other schools uh they grew slowly over time uh even in the first year they might have started with 2530 what if it's what if it's a a wild wildly successful would it cause a would it cause a bunch of students at dery High School to want to leave school and and go

virtual um I think our well I think our intention would be U for it to be an alternative pathway for students who are not finding success in the traditional school so I think when we design our application we would have to be very intentional about these are the criteria um similar uh to what we have you know resiliency or evolved this is the criteria who we're looking for uh and Mak sense to transition into uh the

virtual school yeah it's I'm old school educated this is kind of like it's wild well I yield I I don't I don't have all my my questions answered but I'll see what it looks like as you guys bring us new proposals down the road thank you ield so what does attendance look like in this model like how are we I think it's great to give students options um especially those that are struggling

getting to school because they feel there are safety issues we know those issues bullying issues that they exist and it's a struggle to get get some kids in um what is the attendance like how do we take attendance with these kids that are doing virtual school is there any sort of you know we knowing they're checking in at this time and they're logging out at this time we know that they're

engaged in the curriculum or is it going to be a case where now it's a safety issue because we've lost our kids and we can't touch base with them daily so if you notice in the staffing recommendations we are looking to bring on a principal and a a duly certified that's you know it's what our Focus would be school adjustment counselor and um School counsel school counselor we are look through the program design and

through the exploration of program design there's been a wide range of how kids are marked present for the day what is the virtual check-in requirement for the program model we were leaning into we are leaning into a daily check-in for the safety and wellness ability to get our eyes on visual checkin um leveraging a Google as an opportunity um in in full transparency in one of our focus groups

last week you know between a mom and a and a daughter that were on the line with us they're they were recommending that we virtual check-ins for kids who are not physically showing up and completing the academic work so keeping in mind there's also the opportunity to monitor work completion and there is a way to be able to see behind the scenes and also with the teachers that are connected through the instructional

Services model of uity we would be in direct communication of kids who are not making progress not showing up for the academic coursework if they're also not physically showing up for our virtual attendance check-in then we would go out and do home visits and we would go out and and get eyes on kids the same way we do currently when kids go a couple of days and don't physically show up to our

buildings so we would look to take our attendance policy overlay that to this policy as we begin to develop the systems inst structures for the virtual school model um but eyes on kids and support for our kids and Families is Central to our equation which is also part of our trying to build a community within this lab space to to hopefully be able to get kids in and to support kids

and families with a blend of in person as well as on demand as it meets the needs of kids and families we don't want to replicate what happened three years ago that's what I'm saying that's that's my concern we certainly know that the the whole Virtual School everybody doing hybrid work uh in those times um Everybody nobody had a you know an opportunity everybody had to do it um

we know that some kids thrived and some and most kids did not um so it's not for everybody we don't want to say now this is the option evolve is one of our programs that's finding success every every student should have an opportunity to be successful we feel like this might might be something that will allow some students to find success I think some people are more successful when they're working virtually or more

productive right when they're maybe out of a classroom out of an office and others are not um so then my last question really um is if we have we on board 30 to 40 students what have you some of the students are not showing success they're not showing they completing the work are we keeping them in the program or we saying look we've tried to give you this opportunity you're not succeeding in it we're going

to find something else because there are kids that we have that would succeed in it what is there a plan or any thought in not that you'd have an answer for that right now but well I think with all of our programs cuz we experience something similar with evolve right we have kids who maybe are not finding success with evolve and we have other students that are waiting to potentially

go into that program right so I think it's always about conversations with families when kids get to the point of being disengaged um and how can we support you right um as we know the highet and in the G is available the struggle that we have with that is that kids need to drop out of school first before we can get them access to the GED opportunity the high set opportunity right um you know

we've had discussions certainly Mr agar and myself over the years we've had discussions about the the legislation right and that's not just a Fall River thing but it's the state of Massachusetts reg um but how do we potentially get our legislative support on board and having a discussion around why do kids have to drop out before they can connect with a highet we really the law forces them to drop out of school

disengage with any of the folks that they have been previously engaged with to then have to partake through Community Partnerships that completely isolates them away from all of the resources that the public school can offer them so that's a much larger conversation um and not an immediate response um to the current need however I do believe you know that needs to get tightened up in the way that we support

our kids into the GED opportunity particular when all other alternative options have been exhausted and kids are still not finding success we know that they need a credential of a high school diploma or a GED as a baseline because from there doors of opportunity open up for our kids without that Baseline our kids become victim to circumstances and as a school department we just need to

do best we can for all of our kids wherever that land ideally we're not bringing kids to a point of having to drop out because we all know that's also an accountability measure for us as a district um but when we get to that place we do need to support our kids and families with those tools and resources so I just had a couple of questions before I call on Mr Cory again

can you get us a staffing model and um the enrollment of the five other schools you looked at you know when you you say principal of 20 students it just it it it's a an administrator you're right so it just looks a little like and then if we talk about what the requirements are like it can't be attached to a school what does that mean everything that you just talked about here every single

thing you talked about should be happening already at the alternative school RPA absolutely every single thing from the tutoring for the uity to the supporting kids to allowing kids to do stuff at home and get credit for their attendance if they're doing that we did some of this during pre-o and then all of a sudden we got rid of all the things that were working and I've already said

this before we went backwards but I don't know why we wouldn't reinvent some of these things it's common sense if a kid's not Mee with success well no kidding he's 18 years old he's got three credits and you're going to tell him to go sit in RPA for four more years or dery or you can tell them to go on uity do your five or six hours do what you

need to do or get a high set like it's reality and I just don't know why we're not doing more of it in the and I think we're trying to figure that out but acknowledging the fact that we went backwards is a big is the first step in my opinion of making it almost like a pilot so that we'd have data we'd have information to to share with people to

say before we did this and it's our one year that we're paying all the money up front because it's we're only going to get reimbursed in the following year so and we do have money but it's going to cost if it's $300,000 we got to front $300,000 with zero reimbursement for these students to come back into service I think it's got to be a combination of RPA alternative type programming let some staff do both

things you know maybe the administrative is also so the teacher who might have some skills inal and you know I just think there's a lot of positives to this but it's not as it's not as clear as just like turn it on so you got some work to do which I think you acknowledge in here with the um Staffing Ed the only thing is this is a standalone school so

it could coexist with RPA but it will live independently of RPA corre because it gets its own code so if you put on the second floor where we have a bunch of offices the administrator now is that possible I mean I I if I can be completely honest I do not believe that is possible um one of the very clear um pieces of feedback that we received um is that for for students

that are selecting this because of social emotional needs having had bullying experiences of the past I think we're at a place right now where we are supporting the the rebranding of RPA but I also think we've got to be honest with ourselves about um the challenge that that currently presents um and to have this school live in the same building of a school that we are working with the

principal and his team to redesign models and support students with social emotional needs that run pretty deep over there we want to make sure that both populations of kids are served um and so we we can certainly take a look at how we can but isn't it virtual what am I missing because for us there is a place that we want this school to be to have a lab space and or a location that

would be attractive to kids should the opportunity present to have Community partner events at school and open the doors for our virtual school kids to come in so to bring in when we think about our n9th and 10th graders that maybe need support with mcast tutoring to do that mcast tutoring in person in a location in a space if our kids need counseling supports with our student support um with our support staff if we

can set up opportunities for those kids to physically come into the building that will also help support our kiddos in some of their own social emotional development and Community engagement pieces right and so if this school is living at the physical plant of our current alternative school I think it will change the interest of folks in the current well shame on the school for for that being even allowed

the fact that that's if that's true that the the connotation of them being attached to that school was negative shame on the school that the parents aren't going to want to go because it's oh like oh my God it's uh RPA that that's not a good place so that's that's a shame just in itself but where's the budget for we're going to have another building we don't have buildings and we're going to find another building now

for this no I think we've got some ideas that will be part of the application that we'll be able to ion out some of these pieces I don't disagree with with what Dr Dr B is saying in terms of sometimes the physical space can trigger things especially for kids who are already stressed out due to bullying what have you if they're now in a school where said bully is or said situation is that

affects the learning of that student so to get them to come in to like physically engage you know whether it's mcast tutoring or what have you if I know so and so you know it the school needs a lot of work we all know that it's struggling right the behaviors of the students are difficult there are many students who I know parents call me kids are refusing to go back to school simply because they

don't feel safe there it's sad shame on all of us I guess but that's the reality of what it is um so I agree if we're already having um a standalone school that's basically targeting those kids right who are having a hard time getting to school because of social emotional issues or maybe safety concerns they have or their parents have then maybe putting them giving them the opportunity

to engage with teachers or instruction in a place that feels a little more safer to them might be a better environment I don't think that currently the RPA provides that safe feeling unfortunately a sh for its students it is a shame all I was saying is it's virtual so this presentation was relative to a virtual school so if we're going to say it's virtual we can't be it's virtual but it's also going to be

another school it's going to be a counseling center it's going to it's either virtual or it's not virtual now you say okay we're going to have an opportunity to do counseling to do a lab fine let's put it in outside the superintendent's office or at the administration building beautiful building great part you know like I get the idea of not having it in there I'm talking about Staffing so we have it we

have people so if RPA should absolutely should have experts on Edgenuity absolutely they don't right now because they haven't been using it for a long time we've been told it we spent $660,000 a year on it and they haven't been using it but we should have experts on it par professional teachers Labs whoever who know how to get these things done the fact that the school is struggling somewhat is because of this

is not being embedded in it so all thinking is if we got resident experts that are working on Virtual type of programming if this works next year for these kids I want it to work next week for some of the kids that we're currently struggling with at the school that's really like it's I'm not disagreeing with the the premise it's just that when I see well we're going to have another school we're going to have

a principal we're going to have it you got to be just careful because it's going to be a lot very quick and you know I'm pushing for the high set I think is important I would I would recommend that the 58 people that dropped out of school we offer them right now tomorrow we offer them a spot to come to our school system for the zero and say I want to teach you how to

pass that high set as a pilot you're going to come to school we're going to have provide a tutor we're going to pay a teacher or whoever we're going to pay you're going to take that high set in June and I bet you half of them are going to pass on more if they showed up if kid shows up to school and gets the help as Dr B said with the supports the

counseling or whatever they'll pass the highet and then you'll prove to the legislators this is why you have it wrong we just keep on saying no it's not the law so we can't do it we got a little couple extra bucks we just made 500,000 last meeting come up with 50,000 for some tutoring for all of these kids to re-engage them if they do this and get half their Credits based on their

genuity or whatever you know what now they have hope I can get out so it's either the high set credits Competency Based all the things that evolv's doing are not rocket science rocket they're just not the same demands as some of the other stuff they're doing things in a little different way let's do it for everybody including nth graders because we got nth graders that dropped out too

because they weren't able to get into the evolved program so I think it's something worthy to pass on just so you can notify the committee but I'm not yet necessarily set on saying oh yeah I endorsed this exact program Mr Cory yeah so um uh superintendent I just did was this a program that emanated from desie was this like some some something that they sent you guys on an email or

something well this was something that um came about as a result of postco um recognizing that that some students need something different right so they made um the the um funds and application available for people to explore um whether they had um specific populations that would that would feedback has been has have has has there been some negative feedback in regards to this exploration well I would say say that um

as we heard today everybody's in the initiation stages they're just all starting so I think it's too early to tell I think that um the struggles are the same right trying to re-engage kids bringing them in um we we spoken to other districts they've started small trying to I think that everybody's hoping although I will say ta started with a very small number and it's already grown to maybe 40 so um it's

it's catching on at the beginning it was it was um you know started slow and it's catching on so we won't have data for from its success until people go through a year or two years to to gauge whether um you know it's been successful or not yeah so this was this this whole idea was born out of postco and and the effects that Co had on public education and our Commonwealth and some kids not

coming back struggling to come back to their we all know um some kids never returned some kids are Str struggling their attendance is is erratic some kids are struggling with anxiety and and and being back in traditional environment and this is really trying to um offer kids something different and see because we know it's not for everybody but some kids will thrive in in that kind of

environment with the right supports I I would say we never want to go back to where we were 3 years ago we want to make sure that we learn from those experiences and put the right supports in place yeah as I said in the beginning it's very abstract to me me cuz I'm old school but I can see that it represents progress uh and anything we can do as far as progress is concerned we should

have absolutely explore so I wish you well in that so Tek is the Desi version right so Tekk I think I read in there 50 kids in high school or something yeah something so let's say it's 50 students in high school go to Tekk versus Fall River that's $750,000 that is diverted from our school system to the to tekka by them just saying oh I don't want to come to

the school I can go to te when you sign up for techer if you ask around it's not the greatest thing in the world they have no idea what's going on I can tell you that with firsthand experience they have kids they take them in they don't even know they're on IEPs it's just a total total mess and I know I'm saying that in public but I don't really care

it's the fact of the matter is they're not necessarily lighting the world on fire so if a kid says hey I can't come to school or you can't come to school but I'm doing great your parent our parents say hey we're both going Tekk well I was just doing great in my school you know so that's the kids are gone no credits and that we're going to see start seeing the effects 2 3 years from

now of teeker failures that are now going to be and not doorstep saying well they haven't gotten an ie service in four years and what are we going to do so it's I think that's part of the reason why some of these places are now starting if they're going to do it with Tekk why can't we just do something similar I would also recommend somebody sign up for Tekk to find out what

they're really doing what does those classes look like what to see what what is working or not working and um that's what I'm curious about as well yeah I don't think it's working well just that's just Kevin's personal opinion but so I'm entertain a motion to refer it just in general to discussion just discussion for discussion motion made seconded all in favor I thank you next up 303 SE par conversion at fonica

school principal cob yes yes so um So currently we have an open um par position at the school that we were calling a cell par um you know it's my understanding from last year that person did uh sort of different work than we're doing this year right they were answering phone calls they would sit with students who were removed from class um this year we have our cell staff deployed on the floor so they're

in hallways they're in classrooms they're helping develop Behavior plans collect data helping kids in the moment um to self-regulate and to use some different strategies um so we were looking to convert this this par to um a caison position which um we found those candidates to have much more specialized skill set um that we're looking for so my issue with this at the begin as I said at the meeting wasn't with what

you're asking for was more of a district question so what is this what have you found since the meeting yeah we had a we had a um we have one other position I believe at Sylvia this was before scle zon came to be right so um uh principal Lei um hired Nessie Al par to to to work with uh support some high need students um I think that what we found when we

added aaon these are much more specialized they're doing triage they're doing the you know tier they're uh responding and they're I I I never want to take away from Paris work hard but the need if if fill the need but on the seaa on feels a broader need uh if you will so what um I think that we only we had one um principal Cobb is is looking to um you know create a structure where

she has the aison deployed for grade level spans and um looking for that position to to serve a a bigger role um I I think that in in those days this was before me too but those pars were um to support some um High needs students um so it wasn't a onetoone par but it was a par that was a assigned to some you know hes classrooms yeah I just I just have a

hard time with um that some schools get something and others don't and I'm reminded of the what you just talked about we asked that one of these meetings three meetings ago about the attendance Powers when we brought up the attendance policy that was going to be changed and C back to us or something did we ever find out how many schools have attendance Powers Yeah they all do ex uh we did look into the RPA they

never got one well they have one that they have repurposed into their Works in their intake Center that uh principal Riley is bringing back upstairs to the office perah um but all schools have an office perah as well as a clerk for attendance for they do attendance calls they you know call parents help out in the office and do specifically that work because that was when we were starting

with our uh attendance initiatives it was from years ago and it was the calls were you know unmanageable and it was proposed that we um add an attendance parot to the offices to help with those calls somewhere in here I have I think from Spencer bordon at one time wanted to move their power so I guess they had one at one time I no because principal Cobb was the principal

there so I think it was Sylvia that um had uh par yeah I'll find out any other questions Mr C well the first thing I want to do is praise you because you were at h a very high attain Elementary School at Spencer bordon and then I I left the board so I I was unaware that you left Spencer bordon and are now FICA and um I know the work that you did at

Spencer bordon was awesome and uh so I want to thank you for taking on a school in a very difficult demographic um and hopefully we providing uh best practices there which is so important so I support your request the only thing that I'm concerned with is um I hope it could be bilingual preferred I hope that there's a Spanish Portuguese uh language component and whoever it is you may be

able to fill his position with because that'll go a long way definitely into helping to break down some of the barriers that may exist I agree with you thank you I Mr bar do you have anything so what if we approv this and I think it just tell me to said it wasn't part of the budget or something along those lines can we get something to acknowledge like so if there's one more

position of syvia why AR we won't just change in that one because they didn't ask to change it but they probably will tomorrow well I think it's a valid question I mean if you but if you turn around and say why would one school get it and not the other it's that's why I keep saying I know people roll their eyes and say is Kevin being and Kevin again but it's the fact

people are if they're half paying attention they're going to say there's winners and there's loses in the budget some people present stuff oh I didn't know that was happening happened last year it happened this year that's why I say that I just think it needs to come from the top to say we're not going to have any moreal so if an par was created before the liaison for the reasons that

we just talked about and we created Liaisons the trigger to now once we create aison would be to move the par to an on if if they're qualified and want that position I would say because that's there's a specific job description we're we're not in the business of just saying okay we have a new position so now you're out you're in I think that as positions through attrition we can do

that I get but my point that's my point this position is a teacher assistant par professional so we have thousands of power professionals we have 60 open par professional positions on the website so it's not like the person would lose their job they say you are a power professional right now this position is being elevated to se aison if you don't have the credentials you can apply for

any one of these to not lose your job we don't do that we haven't done that for two years and the Aon was created for two years th this is that's what I'm trying to get to I think that can be a discussion a decision made by Central Administration not having to be each school because you probably like the lady or whoever a lot of times you you know the positions open I'm saying if

you had one it would be a tough like you have to say to somebody you're a good staff member but that's a decision the principle probably wouldn't make but not out of the needs of the kids it'll be out of the personal like respect for the individual I was working in that's why I think it needs to be and I've said that over and over I but I but and I I don't

want to argue this point because I I respect the fact that you want to make sure this Equity but the position if the position is working in another building and they haven't come to us and said hey okay we need that level of support then I think it's it's like it's not right to just displace someone displace them because now we have a new position when it becomes available and if that

principal wants to replace them with an sa liaison then yes fully support but um I think that we need to that person applied for that specific position and to just say hey now we have a different position so now either if you're not qualified you can go work in it might even be a building change right so I understand what you're saying we just trying to do it the right way but but it

happens in education all the time I know I might get hired to teach chemistry and if we don't have any more chemistry needs I might have to teach biology or something like that this is really no different the principle of the school is not going to say what would anld the reason why we created Theon was to have a skill set to do those things just because they might be successful in

doing what they're doing doesn't mean that they can do the seaon work that's meant to so I just think when we talk across the whole thing we need to address each position so I'll entertain a motion to refer this POS ask one more question motion made in second then a question go ahead I just have uh do you have somebody in mind I do not okay so it's something that you will research

now look into once it's posted thank you very much okay go ahead all in favor I on to the next um 3.04 3.05 I think these are going to be a probably some questions from the full committee as well I do think that these people are very um qualified very qualified in the field to do what we need to do so I would like to entertain a motion to move both of these

so that Miss openchain doesn't have to go over the same thing twice uh number four or 3.04 and 3.05 they're both referrals for um contract s for autism specialists in the field to come and work with our children yep yes so they're both highly qualified but I know that she's going to present these questions at the full committee so in the Ence of time I'd like to pass them forward if we can make

a motion Mo second all in favor I thank you 3.06 discussion positions so I wanted to yeah okay um so my team's here too so they can uh clodia pasta and uh Victoria ameral are also here so they can certainly um weigh in um so in response to this this is my opportunity to follow up from the budget meeting where um Dr rodri um had challenged my original recommendation to convert theal

integration specialist position to that that of anal coordinator lead sa position um and so I'd like to just be able to review some of my vision for teaming and building teaming structures across the district um as you know this is my first year in in the um position when I came into the position last year it was after budget season so you know I wasn't in a position or at the table

when any of the discussion around the seal integration specialist came about one thing having been a former principal in the district and knowing the value of my building based teams um coming into this work I knew that if we are going to help our buildings most we need to support our people boots on the ground we need to be in our buildings understanding what's going on in our buildings and

having presence in our buildings so that we can be part of the solutions and part of the systems building around seal I think it's also important to note that we have um purchased and leveraged the leadership program as an advisory curriculum in the secondary level but as far as Elementary curriculum as we were using Choose Love and that has sort of faded a little bit as far as regular use

across the district in some cases not implemented at all and we are currently piloting seal screeners and tools to support the development of social emotional skills among our kids and the subcompetencies within those the full five domains right um so I was struggling with myself to understand how the team was going to evolve and be built originally as well um knowing that our vice principles play a deep role in

the climate and culture of our buildings and providing and supporting social emotionally across our kids I also knew that the vice principal Network needed to be Central in our systems development around building SEAL Teams across our district so if we notice you know we start with oural priority that it is our goal that our kids and all data would would lead us to a place that all of our

kids feel that we are able to create a sense of belonging through meaningful relationships and predictable routine so that all students feel valued and are engaged in their school Community it will be ideal when all of our survey results and all of our outcomes yield to those outcomes for kids within our school Community Fall River has heavily invested in our seal positions over the

course of the last three to 4 years um even from last summer when I when I put the original presentation together to take a look at those positions we have even increased seal positions since then so when we look at the landscape across all of the different titles um including our attendance officers we have 180 people across the district in the roles of attendance officers Behavior therapists guidance counselors

School adjustment counselors SE Liaisons or student support Specialists seal integration specialist social workers student support coordinators which one might argue are all sacks and doing the work of student adjustment council is in our building as well as upwards of 40 Vice principles across the district when we look at um kind of how long have folks been around and what is the veteran status of our cell folks

particularly looking at our Sac social workers and student support coordinat there are 62 of those staff members across our schools of those 62 11 have been with us 10 years plus we have 16 of those staff members who have been with us between four and nine school years but there are 35 Staff members between half a year and three years experience in our schools so when we think about our

commitment and and really as a district team we need to be supporting those staff members in our buildings particularly the 35 Staff members in my mind who have been with us limited amounts of time are still building their toolbox still working with the building teams to develop their work within the building to Foster that sense of belonging and sense of community as well as really being the front line of

managing and supporting our students in crisis and really working with our building principles to support students and families when our kids land in a crisis situation or struggling socially and emotionally as a step down to that when we look at our guidance council is we have 22 guidance counselors there's a little bit more um of continuity in with staff in there six of those staff have been with

us 10 plus years another nine between four and seven and we have seven staff who are within the first 1 to three years of service um our SE liaison you know Mr agar had just pointed that up that position is only been with us for the last couple of years so there are 33 scle aison across the district um nine of those staff have been with us for two plus years because they were enrolled in

another role and got transferred into the liaison um but upwards of 11 of those staff have been with us for the two years since the Inception of the position and another 13 staff have been with us for half a year to just this being their first year in the role and so with that being a new role as District support we have not done as good of a job as I think we need to do

to support those staff and provide the training and the toolbox so that is part of our goal as we continue to move forward of how we are supporting building based teams and putting the professional development for our seaons um and so that will be an ongoing priority for us as well and then the next piece about Vice principles I just think it's worthy of noting that with 40 Vice principles across the district um

nine have been with us between six and 10 years another 11 have been with us between 3 and 4 years but 20 of our kmen vice principal Network had been with us for half a year to two years and so when we think about providing supports to our vice principls and professional development and coaching and mentoring and modeling um I do believe we have a place in that work knowing the front

line that our vice principles play to support all of our support staff that I just noted as well as our kids and our teachers in our in our building and then I noted about the student support Specialists Behavior therapists and attendance officers um and those folks are working strategically across the district in different capacities student support specialist position is only up at dery high school we don't

have those positions anywhere else um the behavior therapist the majority of them are working at Stone one at RPA um a couple one at at dery they're they're sprinkled around to our schools but the heaviest number of them are at our Stone therapeutic day school and our attendance officers you know I've been really proud to work with this group this year there are seven total we've

been working very religiously connected together um on really working hard with our school-based teams to reduce chronic absenteeism and get our kids back into school so some high level observations around our staff in you know we've heavily invested in support staff more than half of our school level support staff have been in their Respec roles for Less Than 3 years and so that was

just something for us to note I see this as an opportunity to develop consistent cell systems across our schools um through regular and consistent support from the district Seal Team coaching modeling and District support for our cell staff across all schools is critical to be able to provide professional development support their growth and retention for the the staff who are in these these positions so this

was you know when we think about where I was moving look forward to and and where I thought um we we were struggling we have three staff at the district seal level to be able to respond and help Provide support to our cell staff across the district we have drew Woodward who is the director of guidance and he oversees the guidance councils and supports the guidance councils across

eight schools we have Oneal coordinator SL lead sack um and one SE integration specialist um as noted you know Mr Woodward is supporting the 22 guidance across all eight schools um theal coordinator currently is supporting and mentoring 62 staff across the 16 schools that doesn't count whatever additional touch points that the guidance council is might bring up because the seal coordinator uh lead act

does support guidance councils whenever they call in need of support or crisis management um as well as having touch points over at 251 in the Early Learning Center making sure that we did provide some social worker support for at those two sites although she's not there full-time she does have um Regular checkpoints with those sta is that c it is C yes yep yep um so just considering

those two additional locations being 18 locations that we are attempting to check in and be present for um and then when we look at theal integration specialist supporting across 16 schools keeping in mind the two Early Learning Centers she does not have any touch points over there with but no real direct team in the building to be left Ling the work around curriculum integration and building seal throughout

academics and throughout our whole school right um it is not just up to our support staff to embed seal practices across our schools but that is going to take concerted effort and opportunities to be present in schools and working with building based teams to understand where do we integrate and what are our integration approaches right um and so as we think about our needs for me it's about the 18 School expectation

personally that's my biggest struggle in this role is being physically present for everybody across 18 schools to be able to be in buildings and have a regular presence so that you know the teams so that we can have difficult and supportive conversations with one another to be able to be really providing wraparound services to kids and supporting the growth and development of our support staff I

believe we need to be present and so as we look at the needs across our our district um how is the human capital responded to and how are we presently showing up so as we look at some of the just some of the data to to just look at the high needs that our current support staff are navigating um this is all self-reported data from our support staff so we collect we have anal crisis

andal data collection as you can see this year based on self-reporting so this might not be 100% accurate some things could have gotten lost um but ideally we know most of our staff are recording when we are filing 51a when we are calling crisis uh when we are having to revert to section 12 with our students and there are large numbers of needs across our schools that our staff are navigating day in and day out um

when we look at being um present and being active in following up on bullying allegations or harassment allegations across our schools current right now we have 35 documented bullying harassment incidents um theal coordinator is responding to schools frequently to support even before it begins to be a formal bullying investigation um so this is an ongoing support that we need across all of our schools currently

right now we are implementing The Bullying survey um in grades 2 through 12 so we will have some more actionable data by you know beginning of April when we look at our incidents across schools you know I do think it's important to recognize that incidents and and conduct incidents become very subjective um depending upon who's recording them and and who is submitting them right um but

that being said one thing I think we do know is that our school staff submit conduct referrals um when students are not meeting expectations and they believe that our students need additional in right and that is going to require someone on our support staff team to intervene with those students right so at the end of the day our tier one expectations andal supports we know look different across all of our schools

we are very inconsistent and we need to get to a more consistent place and so thinking about how do we set a district organizational structure that is truly responsive to our schools and proactively responsive to our schools right is is what I feel we are charged with um we currently do not have an A anal mtss uh multisystems of support that is something we need to continue to plan forward to build out um I do know

that the office of instruction is taking that work on with intervention right now and they are working very diligently are creating a Common Language around intervention and so it will be my goal to build upon that work and adopt some of that language in in intervention Cycles so that we are working in concert with the office of instruction not completely separate to the the office of instruction when we think about

leveraging oural screener the tools that come with it and really making sure that our students that are in need of tier three and tier 2 supports are getting the supports that they need proactively with our school-based staff um so more to come on our development of an mtss model and then in just looking at our conditions for learning so last year you know I came into the role in the spring

as a school department we had not yet implemented the conditions for Learning and by the time we got to a place that we were ready to go it was early June not the best time fully recognize that um that being said we are planning for a spring conditions for learning so that we can get some updated data and more complete data sets around that but when we look at grades 2 to 5 last year we

were able to survey 2342 students um and if we just look at systems of support and social emotional learning you know we are noticing in our Elementary grades the four you know on a scale of 1 to four one being the lowest four being the highest um we certainly have some work to do but we're trending in different pockets in the right direction right when we get to secondary we see that Trend a little bit

differently and so we need to be working with our particularly with our Upper Elementary and secondary school students to really be reflective around how are we supporting our students how are we supporting our support staff um in meeting the social emotional needs of our students and then working with students individually as often as possible through the support staff in our buildings and so just another update

we've talked about this across a few different places but we are piloting umal curriculum for Elementary grades right now um and within those curriculum also there is an embedded bullying curriculum within one of those pilot programs so we will be moving forward with requests to adopt anal curriculum for the Elementary grades by the spring at as well as the universal screener pilot that is currently moving uh we are

finding great success with our pilot program thus far groups are up and running our support staff have been fully engaged in the the project and again we are excited to see where this will roll out for next school year across the kada 12 landscape and so that being said you know what we are also recognizing even through this mini pilot of five schools with the universal screener um our schools are going to

need support and they're going to need support with seeing these models through and so as I'm thinking about building out the the district level support that is where the question sort of comes into play we are certainly finding and and I appreciate Dr rodri for pushing back because it really did Force us to go back and have some conversations with our team you know and where the vision

for the seal integration specialist was you know following up further conversations are that that position was expected to potentially have multiple of those positions so that they could disperse across our buildings and be more Hands-On within the buildings I think there will certainly be a place for that work moving forward with the adoption of a curriculum and the adoption of the screener in the

tools and in partnering with building based teams that we have not yet established within our buildings um that being said when we look at the need for us to support our staff in the building buildings because of in some cases The Limited numbers of years that they have been employed by the district that they have been working here I see this as an opportunity to develop potentially two

teams to have two seal coordinator lead sacks and two seal integration specialist to be able to divide and conquer as a team it also provides an opportunity for both of those roles to have thought Partners particularly when difficult situations come up that nobody is operating in isolation but there can be a divide and conquer on the work and having thought Partners in the work but

also creating an opportunity for those folks to be able to be responsible and really connected to upwards of nine schools each instead of 18 18 schools or 16 full schools each right because when we think about having one person connected to that there's a lot of ground to cover for one person and in knowing the high needs of our buildings and building those relationships within our buildings and being part of our

buildings to be present in support um I believe we I believe we should be looking to be to have that model set up that being said if the committee because I was not I was not part of the committee work when theal integration specialist position was launched if that is the wish of the committee then what I would be requesting if we are not feeling we want to add another District level coordinator that I would request

that we move forward next year to add another seal integration specialist create the building based teams and then be able to evaluate that work um of the integration specialist when those other factors are also in in place next year and then I would come back next year with an update on how our teaming structures played out and how the support in the buildings was felt by building leads and the support staff in

the buildings um but it is ever more clear that again going back to my experience as a principal when people were in my building with a sense of regularity their involvement in in our work was more impactful and so that was really what was kind of pushing my my design is that we had not seen the fruits of the integration specialist position not having curriculum not having other pieces in play and also not

having those building based teams for theal integration specialist to work with I think it's really important just to compare that at the district level you know we have our directors of curriculum but in every building we have either department heads we have Deans or we have coaches whose direct role is to support teachers with planning and curriculum implementation our support staff in our

buildings they're M that is part of their work but it is not their only job and so when we think about the competing priorities as it was stated earlier by Mr raposo when a student is in crisis or a student is in need or a student a family shows up and and needs support we need to be the First Responders for our kids our teachers in our staff so all of

the all of these extra pieces around curriculum integration and being and and creating um the opportunities for seal integration that's all great but we do not have folks right now that that is their job to be supporting teachers with curriculum implementation around seal specifically and so I do believe there is a place for us to also be working with the office of instruction because

those our department heads and our coaches on The instructional side I also believe if we're going to say thatal needs to be everywhere thenal cannot just be something that is supported and promoted by simply our support staff however we are not quite there yet as a district to begin fostering those conversations but I do believe that they are on the horizon and Dr Curley and I

have already begun to have some of those conversation around how do we connect with the instructional coaches and department heads around the integration work with our teachers because they have regular touch points um and understanding of the curriculum to to even know where those opportunities exist within the curriculum now that we are a couple of years deep in our instructional curriculum so I know there

like a lot of moving pieces right um but I say that because I do believe that our buildings and the people within our buildings are doing the absolute best job under the circumstances and with the tools that we have given them and while we're on the horizon to give some additional tools um I believe presence and showing up with regularity and consistency is really important so that the support

staff in our buildings have an opportunity to to have that continu with grow growth cycle um and support when navigating the most difficult situations with our kids um so that is proposal one which would be you know I I'm bringing forth this concept of proposal one which would add another seal coordinator and an integration specialist to create two teams or proposal to to be able to bring

forth another seal integration specialist position um with the idea to Pilot that through next year divide and conquer on the work um and really be clear around the role between the coordinator and the integration specialist as we Embark upon building teams within the building that we can support more directly Mr yes so uh personally I'm in faor of proposal too just from what I'm

thinking but just to give everybody an idea of how far seal has evolved over the past 24 years when I was appointed uh in 2002 as a school adjustment counselor there were 20 sacks districtwide and sacks at that time shared schools they weren't based out of one school they they had two or three schools as part of their case load um and a lot of it was separated uh either um Elementary and

secondary levels uh that's how they develop their Specialties so since 2002 till today that's what's that 22 years now we're looking at 53 sacks and I'm thoroughly in favor of those numbers because I know that the emotional the social emotional landscape in our schools absolutely demands that level of service today so I I want to I want to thank Dr b as a seal assistant superintendent to uh explore this landscape

deeply and uh we don't have all of the answers yet but um would it be possible to uh to ask Claudia to come here to the table Claudia can I ask you to come here for one second just for a couple of questions I just want to get your take on on on this presentation because you're in the trenches every day you're seeing it districtwide you know what is

it that you can bring to us and offer to us as you support this well like you said our our role has increased phenomenally the school adjustment councel um support in all of our buildings which is great to see you know I think Dr B also mentioned all the added the VPS in their role and how they all support as well too so there's there's a lot of moving pieces and people supporting the whole entire student

so just so I want to bring it back a few years cuz we were colleagues at one point and um you saw the peaceful Coalition program in operation as it was and I know that the power of the social skills group and the dialoguing that went on between um The Adjustment counselors and the school teachers and the and the rest of the school staff helped to level some of the playing

field and we were able to head off on some of the extreme occurrences that were about to happen and try to mediate it tolerate it and then head it off so I was just wondering if like increased social skills grouping at I don't know so much about lunch bunches at the elementary level but a true social skills group at the secondary level so I'm thinking like seventh grade on up

you know if what that could do to enhance the playing field out there and maybe help to calm down some of the uh the F the fires that exist every single day because I know the Aon are running around all day putting out fires so I just wonder what the value of true social skills programming could bring to that could you weigh in on that at all we we had purchased the leadership

program for our secondary schs and a lot of the program that they have as well too they have great curriculum that helps us a lot of it is violence prevention type programs as well too where they're able to offer groups utilizing that curriculum as well too this other Curriculum by Dr D had mentioned were piloting over at the high school as well a d curriculum which is a screener which also has curriculum

attached to it where they can utilize those those lessons to run um the groups the social skills groups and prer positive um groups as well and like you said they're doing mediations and a lot of um check-ins with students on a regular basis they are having the Lunch Bunch groups in the elementary schools and they are offering those groups as well in a secondary level I mean it

speaks volumes I think they're extremely important when you're giving that emotional intelligence and the words to kids that can't always articulate what they're dealing with or what their frustration is and just having that person in that room to help mediate and navigate some of those strong feelings that might not be able to identify really what is it that they might have been upset over that could have been

easily um uh fixed through talking so I think it's definitely powerful work yeah I do too and I see that you guys are all working super hard on trying to figure this landscape out and how much we should invest in it moving forward I really think that the the ad of social media has just caused so many issues of anxiety in the students in all the schools not not only in fora everywhere

you know social media is it's it's crazy it's crazy the amount of anxiety I know I speak to School nurses and School nurses are telling me that anxiety is is off the charts you know with these kids and I don't remember being that anxious when I was a kid so you guys got your hands full and we're not going to stop so media it's here to stay and we got to

we got to wrestle with that and I really look I mean we went from 20 adjustment counselors in 2002 to 53 now that alone tells you what's going on in overall society and how you Lori and sped have to deal with that too as well you know because it's it's also firing up all those cases well I don't know if I uh admire I mean I admire you guys I don't know if I

want to be where you guys are at right now wrestling with this issue but I support all of this and uh I just hope that you continue to try to like wrestle with the issue and and figure it out keep bringing it to us thanks so you s so you have two proposals here I I kind of favor the first one even though I know it's it's more um I like the way

it's set up I think retention is a big piece and I know you have it I'm talking about our teachers and I know you have the word retention written on both but I know that this first proposal seems like it's just providing more sport not just to our students but also to our Educators um what do you obviously you have a preference I mean my preference is is proposal one I would tell you that the

piece about proposal two if you notice we did bring on the lead Sac role um in our district this year we've just launched it this second half of the year um cuz it took us a little bit of time to get going so I have no issue moving forward if we went with proposal to to give us the time to really develop theal integration specialist role as well as build up

theal um excuse me lead sack role at the building level um to then be able to come forward next school year after systems are revolved and we have really leveraged those positions um that would be fine but to have the the current model right now is just not as not effective the way that we would need it to be with knowing what is coming with our curriculum tools um if we are going

to in in fact take some of those pieces because Claudia has been very essential to that work this year um and I don't know if it's because of the new position coming on board and just the shift of leadership at at at my level as well but we have to be able to all get in our lanes and Ure that we are providing the direct support to our staff in our

buildings um so I do have some ideas around the building based teams and working with principles um to create a a district cell team that would mirror that of our Ela team and our math team um but we just have to be certain that we are meeting the needs and professionally developing all of our staff under our care and it is a and I know that it is a big Financial shift right to have a

director and anal integration specialist um I I recognize the budgetary pieces to that and so I felt like that was you know this was the opportunity to put those on the table at the same time I think there's an opportunity to explore with proposal to um but I would also say that come a year from now there's not saying that we might not be back here again with either another seal

integration specialist if we are getting the traction with that position um but to ensure that our across the district we we are able to show up and be physically present for our staff across buildings and be proactively present thank you so my questions along the lines of where we we currently are so we had a change in leadership we had positions that were created I don't personally believe that the positions

that we created are being doing the jobs that we created them for so the job descriptions I have several times I keep on looking at my paper saying updated job description what are we what did we say they were going to do before we hired them and what are they actually doing they don't align and everything that I could figure out we have um the director of Mental Health Services rationale says we requesting this

decision be upgraded to a director this parody with other stuff this position will support crisis obviously new positions so almost like when we vot when I voted for this it was like they were going to be the boss of the lead sacks theal integration specialist the movement therapist I don't even know if that came true um when I look at this and I say okay what does the job description look like it's from 2019 and

it talks about position participating in the RTI program at each School the like things that are in the slides that are not happening but I think we need to upgrade the job descriptions for all of these folks so that we know what is the person in the position doing what are they supposed to do and if we want to change it we just change it I think

now is a good time to look at it so we can we can not only just add positions but fix the reporting structure what is the person's role if I was of the belief that when this position got upgraded it was because the the person was doing all this work was in charge of Crisis any crisis that happened she was the crisis person she determines yes this that whatever is going to happen based on

like license counseling you know that was it I don't necessarily think that's happening but I it kind of half shows in here so I think we need to just put it out there I think we need to look at all of the different job descriptions theal integration I looked at that and that's not doing what that was supposed to do either so Dr Rog mentioned this at one of the meetings that for whatever

reasons there was shortages and staff things but it wasn't that we had a a good shot at integrating with one person anyway we knew that but I think we can do better but I don't even think it's to say that we it didn't work because the person didn't do that they weren't necessarily task with that for the whole year so even In Pockets I don't think um we have it some don't exist some count

curriculum exists some doesn't I think we're kind of all over the place so I think it's a good time to review all the job descriptions review the or chart and figure out um I would go with proposal too personally because I think reporting wise we need a second person integration you know in the schools um but at the same time I think we should look at the school adjustment counselor job

description and responsibility and expectations they're not the same across the district the mental health needs a tremendous of what we're dealing with but then if you're in that field you start to get the you're going to be the licensed compy counselor that's not necessarily the role that a lot of people think that they're doing as a sack so they're not all created equal some places have a you said a team or

whatever you talked about in a school I was thinking that's how it should be anyway you got a principal three VPS couple of department heads or whatever that's $6 $700,000 of administration if you can't figure out a way to get a team and have everybody working together doing this other problems than adding a position here so I think people need to be held accountable to say this is your

responsibility as a sack this is what you're going to have to do sometimes that requires you to do extra sometimes it requires you to collaborate a little bit more uh the leads I I got a not here job description for the leads I'd love that to come back to this committee because when we look at it the things that you're hoping if you look at a job descriptions AR going to they're just

giving away money my opinion so it's not necessarily doing what you want as a person who's going to lead the ax and it's like that in all the departments maintenance and everything we got leads that just because they they're senior not that they can lead but that we're going to pay them a couple grand extra I just think we need to look at all the job descriptions incl personally not by

Monday or whatever not by the next meeting but you know what I'm saying like I just think now is the time you're you're trying to do the right thing for the right reasons I think all of your counseling people are but if we're going to fix it let's try to fix it thoroughly so that we know here's what's going to happen and if that means positions change position shift and so be it but

we just I don't want to just keep adding for the well there's been a shift anyway because of theas on role has played a major role in how Sachs operate too so it's probably a good time for us to recalibrate those because that's taking some duties that saxs used to one certainly though within all of this though at the end of the day knowing what we are planning for moving forward

knowing what we are looking to invest and the support that our buildings are going to need for developing implementation plans right I know we cannot do that with Oneal integration specialist and so to be able to have two integration specialists at a minimum and again we can talk about what that divide looks like to give people nine schools to then be able to really have a regular

reoccurring presence in those buildings to help support and ensure that our systems are becoming established and our teams are becoming established um we can then take a look at to Point how maybe there are places that we can make some tweaks around job descriptions but none of that will necessarily change the way that we do business immediately out the gate um but I need to be able to make a

plan for this year's current budget situation right and I know I will not have time to review all of these job descriptions in preparation for the budget season at the same time so as I think about building a bench knowing we are doing that with the guidance Council of jobs for for other reasons around that Staffing continuum um I will be putting forth on my on the budget piece for this year rather than

converting theal integration specialist which was what was challenged that night um but to add an seal integration specialist so that we truly can create those opportunities for there to be People boots on the ground to support our support staff with some of theseal curriculum materials as well as um the universal screener tools because we are already noticing in the pilot some the

struggles that our schools are having with seeing some of this work through and we want to be certain that all of our schools are set up to be successful and able to respond to the needs of our kids and students in school communities um that come and go every day unpredictably what is the role of the school adjustment counselor in integrating social emotional learning into the school

currently so right now in terms of elementary middle in high school they're the ones that help support that work in partnership with the teachers so initially when I proposed thatal integration specialist position I remember speaking highly on really needing someone to have a teacher background because it's the teachers who do the work they're the frontliners delivering those messages and the

curriculum so for me when I proposed that position it was important that it wasn't a social worker or a mental health clinician but yet someone who was a teacher and had that teacher background some of the feedback I get sometimes it's easier for me or easier for the social workers because we have a counseling background to deliver some of those lessons so I thought it was important that but what is the role I

understand fully exactly what you're saying but what is the role of the counselor in doing this supporting the uh supporting the building in terms of um the lessons making sure the teachers have what they need to set it up and and and having uniformity across the building as well too so run yeah setting up they're running groups we're currently leveraging um screener the theal screener data we are leveraging

groups realizing the time that it takes to plan for a group implement the group and then record the outcomes from the groups right in addition to that our sacks are also as we know um providing direct support to our students through special education as well as our students who maybe are not on a special education plan and need that regular check-in um they're doing check-ins and checkouts that collecting data around

all angles of behavior and supporting directly in classrooms um as needed so how many lessons uh School adjustment counselors running in a classroom in any given School related toal any so push in class uh lessons it depend on as well too in the I'm just curious and I'm not trying to put you on spot I think that's good data for us to have how many groups are being run like I heard today again we running

groups re run groups a year and a half ago somebody told me that a certain position was running groups and I'm like I talk to people they tell me they're not running any groups but they run groups so talk is cheap like what are they actually doing but then when you get into I think there has to be a role for the 62 sack positions or the equivalent thereof to actually help run it cuz what

I can Envision is we added thisal integration person then it's another one then it's going to go on the classroom teacher who's teaching the English math social study science to teach this to then it's going to be we want five more seal integration like that's I just trying to head it off before this is meant to be like a coach not necessarily the person implementing the lessons

that's right and that's the you know how we can get out of hand quick and it'll be like no we now we need 10 of them well correct well so but that is also why I tried to pull the data around our our support staff we have a growing and developing support staff and between all of the new positions that we have added as well as folks who leave us and then

we have to hire new folks on board it does take us some time to get Folks up in in moving into our systems and depending upon the school um it is a mixed situation right now however these are all the things that we are looking to Norm on moving forward as well as to be providing the research-based curriculum and the tools to implement the groups with because we have not sponsored the those materials for are

our support staff so the the groups and supporting with groups and identifying whether it's a Lunch Bunch or a formal group or or a group that is connected to a student's IEP that has to be the focus of our work as we continue to go forward but we also have to ensure that our folks have the tools to run meaningful groups um and and the and also the tools to measure the skill growth because the

other part of it is that we're not just going to run groups to run group sake but our goal is to be developing the social emotional skills and subcompetencies of our kids and right now we don't have a way to measure that um we will ideally moving into next year um but that is the goal of where we're headed and how do we build to your point the district team to be almost

comparative to that of the math team and the science team and the ELA team so that those experts can also then go back and embed that work within their buildings um so that is our Collective goal but to your point having said that um if a class because it depends school to school if a class needs conflict resolution or whatever it is I would expect that the sack is going in there pushing in and delivering that

we're not that's not I'm not saying that doesn't fall on the teacher but that's that's the work of the sack the teacher might be in the room but we can't put that on the teacher too right so that that is where the sack would push in and deliver that lesson with the teacher in the room with in the pull out so they do do that work are they noticing any any

any type of um behavior that they want to do a sack pushing to do a classroom lesson they do that but the ask is that they're all running groups um throughout all of our schools right now so I don't have the exact numbers right now but that's our ask I think it's just also letting them know from the boss this is the expectation so the expectation is you're going to be push in groups based

on what's happening in your building that should be the case it shouldn't be a push back to a new VP or a new principal who was saying oh I can't push back she's been here for 10 years and she says she don't do that whatever it needs to come from the top to say this is the expectation this is part of your job description that this is what you do

and I think sometimes we get the push back and it's like well that's not okay so I'm in support of proposal too um for this year and then come back and and revisit it but also with the um job description review review one more brief question uh it's it's it's more of a comment than a question um I first of all I really really like this uh landscape this whole proposal breakdown of of where we're at

it really gives me a good barometer as to you know exactly where we're going to need to go to in the future also uh right here on page two it says all staff create a sense of belonging through meaningful relationships and predictable routines so that all students feel valued and are engaged in their school Community I really like that St and I really hope we can all work together

toward that goal and with that I want to thank you Dr B for this landscape I yield do we want to make a motion for uh proposal to or do you want to leave it open I like proposal to myself do you want to make a motion I'll make a motion to forward proposal to it gives us a little bit more time I'll second roll call roll call Mr Dr yes Mr Cory yes M

yes thank you very much so last up 3.07 update on Early Childhood status um I just want to set the why I put that on here is because we had the last meeting and I think that when we when we adopted um superintendent's recommendation I think it took on a life of its own and I don't think it was a fair uh a fair opportunity for people to be heard so I'm speaking for myself when I

voted to do the superintendent's recommendation that you have to rewind back a month before the real issue is um we haven't had the right systems in place to have enough space to service the children including those with disabilities that's what was clear to me and it's been clear to me for several years on this committee and at that point is when I said and I think I'll still stand by at 100% enough's enough

we needed 30 days to get some people working here to figure it out um at that time we came up the superintendent's recommendation and her team which I think we need to respect the fact that they went and did the work that they had to do not looking at what section of the town the school is in or anything else and said here's what we need for the long-term success of Fall River based on

Early Childhood the other uh fonsa and the other moves and I think that got lost in the shuffle here and I think we need to get back to looking at what's the best thing from the superintendent's recommendation and her team going forward for prek as well as the rest of the school but this is about early childhood and expansion and I really think that we need to get back to what

is I know it was tabled in the full committee it doesn't mean we can't discuss it we need to try to figure out what are we going to do what's best for the long-term success of the um students I told some people how would you feel if your child was 4 years old when they criticized this committee's discussion how would you feel if your child was four years old and they needed services

in a preek classroom and you were told sorry we don't have a space that's what we have to be telling people last year and we said we were going to tell him this year to me that's totally unacceptable and that doesn't matter where you live that doesn't matter how you vote it's just a fact and that got totally thrown off and we said well we're going to close tany school nobody

here wants to close tany school but if we're facing reality we have to look at all of the options and take the other stuff out of it take the politics out of it take everything out of it and say what are we going to do with prek last time we sat at the meeting I said the first thing we got to do is ask the full committee to vote vote what do you want

to do with prek we still haven't taken that vote and we need to because people can say all they want we need to you know do Universal pre we we just have to say what we're going what we want to do if it's strictly that we need enough seats for the children with disabilities when they get assessed at three and a half or whatever the year is then we have one

set of things if it's more Universal we have another set of issues I went back and was so aggravated with the way that it was handled that I started to look and say I know we've been having these discussions so I would ask to the administration the student Opportunity Act in 2021 says expanded full day high quality prek for four-year-olds is one of the core pieces of the student

Opportunity Act paperwork I went back to ask for other minutes superintendent evaluation prior superintendent to be fair but m p was the assistant at the time priority Early Childhood it says we will use strategic future SOA funding to both convert more full- day programming and create more classes for full day kindergarten by March of 2021 we will develop a 3 to 5year comprehensive plan

to restructure and strengthen our preschool program outcomes would include targeted special ed programming for three-year olds expansion of full day programming for four-year-olds with and without disabilities the creation of An Early Childhood Center the plan would include an analysis of enrollment Trends to guide decisions projections for financial needs staffing outfitting of

classrooms as well as facility needs as this will have budget implications it will be presented to the school committee prior to the adoption of the budget success will be measured by the delivery of a 2 to threeyear district-wide plan for expansion of early Ed programming this is why I'm frustrated because I've been on the committee and I've been asking these questions we've been saying we're going to have a study

we're going to talk about this place we're going to talk about that place we're going to rent this place we're going to do that I still don't see these things I don't see a written comprehensive plan I don't see any of that stuff I see that we spent $15,000 on a demographic study in August and we spent 7 minutes at a facilities meeting talking about it that's it $15,000 in August so when I when I get

into this it has nothing to do with closing the YY it has to do with having conviction about what's right and the superintendent and her team made the recommendation to this committee at that time the committee forwarded it to the full committee we offer recommendations either through phased in or an all at once approach I think we got to get back to the reality of what it is and I think

the parents brought up some really valid points relative to keep this child in the school uh they've been in the school for 3 years we don't want to disrupt them valid valid points but we can't just say sorry we can't discuss it anymore we need to talk about it and you all need to talk about it and say what is your recommendations because it as far as I'm concerned we can stagger that

out we can phase it out there's other options than just closing the school right out and that's why I wanted to put this at least be able to talk about it and I want the superintendent to weigh in I want the team to say what is it that you talked about what is the real struggle because if we don't do that the narrative is going to be we just want to

close teny school and that's not the case so I'm offering this opportunity to say what you you got to say and this is your opportunity it's on tape people can watch it and and see what they have to say but I really think we need a plan and we need to do it yesterday so Adam superintendent well I agree that we need a plan I think that the intention was

never to just put on the table and I will say that the wording on that agenda probably in hindsight it's said discussion and vote it wasn't a vote to close tany it was a vote to lead us in a direction which plan do you want which direction do you want us to go in but that got lost in the shuffle that that is true um the if if you recall um the

recommendation was either phased in or all in what we did is we researched looked at our demographics look at looked at our numbers to try to figure out how do we uh create space for our immediate needs and I I I want to be clear because I said that at the subcommittee meeting also we're not even talking about Universal precare yet we're talking about compliance this is about our we need space for the students

who at when a student has disabilities they at age three they become ours if they need Services they become ours we have an obligation to provide services to them through pre- they go to early intervention until that time and then they become ours we have prek we have three-year-old we have full-time four yearold program so some of that um uh goal has been we have worked on it we

you're right there isn't a 3 to 5e plan that's one of the things that we said we need to put together because Co happened in there too so you we all need to I know it's not popular but we do need to own that it kind of distracted all of us but the fact of the matter is that we were looking to propose something for our immediate need right so in order for

we have classrooms at 2501 when we saw the demographics uh the data for fans and how it really is built it's in a neighborhood that's so densely populated we have 1,200 kids that really should be going to fonsica only room for maybe 650 to 700 students and the other students are displaced and they're all over the city I I agree there was a lot of good uh um feedback from parents we we wanted the direction so

that we could involve the right stakeholders at the table we never got to that so it looked like we're making this decision to close tany without really having any input we we just our task force was an internal task force that we were charged to go over there look at our data look at our numbers to see explore how do we do this and how do we create space for the kids that are in

our immediate need and then we also need a long-term plan where the committee this is going to be the universal prek plan is not a follow Public Schools issue only this is a community issue what that proposal is for Universal pre is that every four-year-old has access to a seat at the table for prek that that seat can be within our schools and it can be within the community and private daycare but parents would have

access to those to that service that's going to require uh uh some difficult decisions as a as a city we have to decide if we go that route where are we going to house all these children because this is going to require much more space than our immediate need right now we needed classrooms we looked at it and we know there's certainly Kristen can clarify lots of question and information about the whole thing why

they can't go up to the third floor second floor point of egress point of entrance right children they're little three-year-olds I mean going up one flight going down one flight the recommendation the safety guideline is that they stay on the the one floor we are already stretching by having them go up one or down one right but if there was an emergency they have to evacuate we have to make sure we are thoughtful

with those decisions certainly we looked at okay so we don't have any one unit schools in our district we looked at the demographics the only one is tany we looked at it tany has only onethird of their students are actual neighborhood students the other 2third are students that are from within the district and that's why we said Okay so let's look at if that were to come to fruition we

didn't say we're all in we're going to close it tomorrow recommendations close it for September and start but that was one of the options if we thought about it and we said we could potentially create an Early Learning Center there we could have 12 to 14 classrooms possibly add another one or two modulars in there and create up to 16 classrooms and that would make a An Early Learning Center we

didn't say today or tomorrow but that is something that could be a viable solution that could be a phased out model I'm parent I'm a grandparent I I I hear people saying you're going to rip fifth fourth fourth graders out and they're not going to graduate with it yeah we have to think about all those things right all those Logistics but we we weren't given a direction as to we

didn't get to that point to say okay do we continue to explore this do we say no that's not an option we're going to I want you to look in this direction we have to commit one way or another because we are running out of space and we need to figure out where we're going to going to put kids I will say that since that meeting and I will say that

you're right cuz on February 8th we met and I think Kristen we talked about this whether it was Universal and I said this isn't Universal this is just about meeting our needs compliance because I think you said we're out of compliance uh without space but since that meeting um we were charged yes the tany piece is tabled right so unless the committee takes it off the table um to to make

some decisions about it but we were charged that that meeing to explore the stone because we proposed we would U Move Stone to 2501 and create a neighborhood Elementary School at Stone which would be become what used to be westall right and populate that because we have students within that neighborhood that are within walking distance so that would become a neighborhood um school so since then

we've met to talk about these possibilities we were charged with meeting with sta with with families first priority is meeting with stone families right we're going through that process right now because if the parents were dead set against it we're not going to force it on them either and we we can't even um start meeting with the westall families we have tentative dates because we're expecting to be finished

with those conversations where we discussed if tany becomes a viable solution what would a phase in and phase out model look like right we still have to look at that and have a plan so that if that's a viable solution we we could present that and then we would include um stakeholders in that decision westol would start as a pre- to four maybe add move the prek classrooms that are at

2501 put them there for that year because they would become the kindergarten and then go from there not add fifth grade because obviously we're not going to displace the fourth graders um we looked at our current the current fourth graders remaining we also looked at other site options Pace Annex a lot of talk about Pace right as potential viable solution uh Mr Michael ISAC has done a lot of work with that in in um

working through the spacing Etc so that requires a timeline we know that the roof there's a uh is going off for bid right now um that's going to require putting fire suppression and then creating that space what's the timeline on that what's the cost on that is that something that would be available for September of next year for August September of next year 1207 Globe Street that's an option that we had explor

that's an $1 million option the city will have to factor in if they want to invest in that if that's an investment if we're going to say we're going to commit that's what the Comm commitment will cost we looked at Conley as the option A lot of people brought that up okay Conley is available I will say we already had a call into them we hadn't heard back but we have a meeting with

them tomorrow to hear about uh possibilities what they're thinking I don't know I don't want to say anything that it it's but we want to hear what's your plan for that building at at least for the first floor is there an opportunity for us to to um get in on that like the Armory was brought up we talked about that how could we make those we would get four classrooms in

that main floor if you kept the gym Etc is that cost effective to do that and our next steps were you know we're talking with the stone families we also have we're going to create a a survey for fansan West all parents of students within that neighborhood right because of if we're saying we could populate that building with neighborhood kids from tan from fonsica right we have to

reach out to those parents let them hear what we're saying and talk about because those kids go somewhere now right so they're going to have to commit to coming back to the neighborhood if I if I'm bringing my child all the way AC because we do have hundred and some kids at Green right we have 100 kids at lerno so if I'm bringing my kid clear across this the the city I might say if they're

first grader I might say yeah I want them in my neighborhood if they're fourth grader I might say let them finish off the year so we have to look at those because all of that matters right it matters for the tany parents it matters for these parents it matters for everybody um we also will need to communicate with families we have potential dates for parents Square for to communicate with families and a date

for uh a forum for the those westall parents that would inhabit that um building one for March 28th on the Thursday um one for April um 10th and one for April 11th at 5:00 to get input from them to say hey if this was an option would you want to bring your child back um you know because they could walk to school uh potentially right create a short-term and long-term strategic plan yes we need a short-term

plan to be able to let's say the the uh Stone goes to 2501 we inhabit um fonsa we're going to be able to do that that's a short term for this year and let's say the becomes an option for next year let's say Conley all the stars aligned Conley we would be able to have the first floor we could have a short-term plan in order right now but we still

have to think about okay so what does Universal look like where are we're going to add more classrooms because that's got to be part of our answer we do need to do that 3 to 5e plan for the short term and and the long term and we have to do a cost analysis what is this costing us so if we enter into the arena if the school committee says yeah I want

you to explore Universal prek what are we looking at for cost right because prek students aren't reimbursed the same way as our typical students right so what the cost analysis and we also have to do the completion of 21 to be ready so that we can make those moves it'll be a busy summer to make those moves move the kids from Stone over set up all those classrooms and then make sure that

um westall is ready to go so we've done done a lot of work we still have a lot more work to do um but we need to make sure that everybody's on the same page it this was it it was intended to make sure how we fix the short-term issue at hand which was compliance driven and also thinking about longterm what do we do right now we're exploring all options we have some potential viable Solutions

on the table and then we have to look at I agree there's got to be a commitment one way or another what are we doing with uh Universal pre can I ask before I open up for questions the you mentioned the one floor issue and almost like that's a regulation of some type it's a safety guide whatever it is can you put that in a one page or to the committee

yeah AB because I think what happens is we lose sight of the fact that we have buildings we don't have many buildings that are one floor that's right and it's almost that's DET determining what we can do with the those buildings going forward so we can say all we want that we don't want to offend a certain set of parents that are that are angry but if the school is the only school that has

one floor and we need to expand at some point whether it's this year 5 years down the road it's inevitable that that school's not going to stay open under that condition it doesn't make any sense for all children to do that so I think that getting us some more details as a full committee that it kind of and the parents can read that and understand it too it's not an option really other than

we had the Carol school we talked about it we knocked down the Carol school we should have kept that open that would be a nice prek but if you look at all all of our schools and you say which ones meet the safety recommendations putting that out is I think a good option for us to at least get some more info yeah I can do that and it is it is a

recommendation so it's the National Fire Protection it's the code guidance that the Massachusetts regulations are built upon it is not a Massachusetts regulation that they have to be on the floor of egress it's the recommendation from that organization that they beat on the co on the floor of erass that's not always realistic and so we do have children that are up or down one floor more children in the community and

Community Based child carees do attend on two floors um what's important for us to be mindful of is all of our preschools are special education programs and so while being up or down one floor is reasonable we are working with children who have sometimes significant developmental disabilities and so their ability to safely navigate that one flight of stairs is very different than a typically developing

child if I could add just it's just one thing so when we developed the um the RFP for 2501 in those um documents we made sure that we were going to have two floors that were ground level so we built the ramp system to get into the first floor and we had the lower floor um that had a regular entrance so we capitalized on a building that had the topography to

allow us to do those two entrances the way we did or we would have lost another whole area uh with the building that was technically with basement four stories so we knew that we were going to have two stories that we couldn't inhabit with prek but we knew that we had District issues whether it be class size reduction or other issues that we wanted to address which was 25 one was that

perfect fit for that piece so we we do we've been looking for single level ground level entrances for the same reason that the fire department and all of these regulations are trying to get a three-year-old just a three-year-old who does not have any any um um disability physical or right U limitations never mind a three-year-old is coming downstairs you know and trying to figure out how we're going to get him

in and out of buildings when that fire alarm does go off and knowing that I that those that teacher in that um par probably has 15 14 people in the classroom to get them all out um as quickly as they possibly can so and someone said if they have the elevator uh and fire suppression it's okay to be upstairs but elevators you can't use when you know so I will never I will

never agree with putting a a three-year-old on a third floor because we don't want to move other kids let me stop by saying the last subcommittee meeting I think that the information you presented made sense I don't think any of us that were at that committee were voting to close a school right I thought it was going to be on the agenda more like a vote to have you continue to look delve into that and

look at how that can happen and how that can be um can be done how many scholars could we hold at the westall now about 300 okay and how many at tanze uh about 300 305 so is it viable cuz what I heard and believe me I was so impressed by those parents there's nothing a child is so lucky when they have parents who advocate for them and I was just so

impressed with the turnout and you know the behavior of 99.99% of the parents with they advocating for their children which is what they should do MH um it doesn't make me feel good right I have friends who have kids to go to go to those schools that's kind of where I live I get it but I didn't get elected to make decisions for my friends or for just my neighborhood I got

elected to make decisions for the best of all of our students and maybe even part of me thinks I have to fight a little harder for the ones that don't have those parents who are advocating for them maybe that's wrong of me but that is how I feel um when we asked you to look into that school it was simply because because I know we've looked everywhere I'm not a fan of rent this

rent that what are we going to rent if we need the space and we're going to rent conly certainly it's a conversation we should have and and information we should get but I'm not a fan of being at the whim of some other landlord and then what happens if they decide they don't want to rent to us anymore now what are we going to relocate 10 schools or however many classrooms are in that

facility that's not a long-term Solution that's a Band-Aid to a problem we have a compliance issue that is the number one thing that we have to get taken care of that's the bottom line we're not just talking about three-year-olds we're talking about three-year-olds with special needs we are talking about the most delicate the most delicate of our population I'm okay advocating for that

and I'm okay if people out there are not okay with it I'm I'm very fine I sleep well at night if I feel like I'm making the decision um that I feels right with that being said what I did hear parents saying not one parent said I love the school the GR is green what a nice playground they didn't talk about the walls all they talked about was the

community that they felt and I I I think that's lovely but I also think we have to acknowledge that I'm sure fonsica school has Community I'm sure that principal's proud I'm sure Spencer bordon feels a sense of community right that school does not own all the community right they don't have all the best teachers we have best teachers scattered throughout this city scattered everywhere some of them working really

hard with special with our special needs population so every teacher is important and what I heard was they don't want to be separated I don't want to lose those teachers the kids don't want to be separated from that Community I understand that is there a way we can navigate a solution because then the other thing is I heard a lot of well we're closing our only small school hm no we're relocating our only we're

thinking of relocating our only small school to an area of the city that needs it more yes it's a high performing school I don't think it's the building I think it's the kids that are in that school that make it high performing because they have parents at home that advocate for them as we saw so and Spencer bord is also a high performing school and it's it's there it's the highest performing school yeah

it is so when I say I don't think people should have a complaint what I'm saying is we're looking at a community of course people are going to have complaints they're going to have concerns but my point is you came to us and you said the Spencer board in tany neighborhood has two schools but we don't have enough kids in that area to populate both of those schools well that's like that doesn't make sense to

me and then we have another school that's supposed to house 1,00 kids but only houses 600 oh no we're going to keep those two schools in North End because we don't want to move anything sometimes change has to happen but what I want to know is to cuz I do understand again to go back to yes we need to fix out we need to settle this for our prek we need to something we

have to do not talk about it let's do it let's make decisions let's do it instead of wait and wait and wait and waitting I'm and Y and Y and Y it's always tomorrow instead of doing that let's look at what those parents and and students were saying and those teachers and let's find a way if we can to navigate that better so could we move them to the westall minus K cuz we're

going to be bringing in k and then take in K from that westall area those kids and teachers are still together Fifth Grade graduates now you have first grade from that area and you enroll another kindergarten it will take a while to get to where we need to be but maybe it's a more fair process so we're not I don't want to separate those kids I don't want to take fourth graders who've been with

the same kids I don't want to do that nobody wants to do that I don't want to take teachers who are functioning together and have built a team and support each other I don't want to separate them I don't think anybody wants to do that but we have decisions we have to make and we we can't say certain neighborhoods own schools we function as a district which means we all have to help each other out

sometimes I got to give a little more sometimes I might need to take a little more cuz I need more help that's how it works as a team as a team and I think the way it was presented on the agenda you're right when I got the agenda I was like wait what's this why does it say vote it even can thre me off off right where immediately I made a phone call to

the chair like what's going on I'm not voting to do anything tomorrow we need to look more into this I have no I had no intention of walking into that meeting that's what I said to the 100 phone calls I received I had no intention of walking into that meeting and voting yes to just close a school we're starting a conversation it's a hard conversation but when I left that

meeting that last slide which I will say again said next steps I would have never left that meeting okay if you were telling me you weren't going to talk to the teachers you weren't going to talk to the parents that would have been insane to me and on that slide that said next steps you had meet with the teachers which I believe you did the next day well we did it on that Friday

uh when was I meeting our meeting was Thursday you did it the next day how much quicker could you have done it go home and do a zoom call how much quicker could you have done that well I mean 8:30 really okay maybe 8:30 a.m. fair enough and that was one of the and that's fine because maybe maybe that's that's fine you did let that linger all day while teachers are trying to work

and trying to educate and now they're thinking about this they're having the conversations in the break room okay so what maybe it should have been done at 8:30 we learned from our mistakes maybe that communication should have happened I I will say I got home from the subcommittee meeting and called the principal um we we I we wanted to go meet with them in the morning but um because it was later he thought it would

be better to do it in the afternoon in hindsight you're absolutely right because what it did is let people just it let people stop getting a narrative that wasn't true it's like i' I've lived for over a long time we play a bad game of telephone I st here and all of a sudden by the time it gets to do to be it's like what what are they because people weren't getting all the

information they were getting bits as pieces they didn't watch the full meeting because if they did they would have heard us all talk about these concerns bits and pieces of the meetings that were pulled out maybe which is fine I don't expect parents to sit through all these meetings at all I know that they're busy I get it um I was a busy parent too still am but these are conversations we have to

have and the reality is yes I'm sorry I know it's not a popular decision but until you can come to me with a better building than that for our prek which I would love to hear I would love to hear it we looked we looked at Globe you know I'm not interested in renting I'm okay with still renting East and a because we're already there I told you at that meeting I was not a fan of

creating more classrooms to then no longer rent um from the church because to me that wasn't increasing classroom it was relocating and I'm not I will not vote to relocate and shift teachers and students around when we're still out of compliance cuz that just doesn't make any sense to me those kids are very doing very well at on that eav location priest is very nice the the the church

Community is very nice I believe they want us there I don't think they're kicking us out anytime soon so I I Feel Fine keeping that until we get our ducks in a row but we still need more classroom space so I still think I am for figuring out how we can get into compliance with our prek kids get them in a in a building that's safe for them because that is important

we can all say let's use this building third floor F yeah it's just a recommendation then there's a fire then there's a fire and we have a classroom a 17 threey olds and maybe one teacher cuz the par is in the bathroom or something that's unacceptable unacceptable and any parent who advocating for their child that would be a parent that' be advocating for their child if their child was three

or 4 two so I think when the dust settles and they understand we're not looking to break up a school Community we're looking to do what's best for the entire District they will understand that and they will hear it because I also heard those parents say yes I agree with universal preet they know it's needed they know that they just want to make sure their kids are not you know having social emotional and I understand

that that's what they should be doing that's their job and I respect them for doing it I just hope that we all get respect for what we do which is our job yep that's all so I don't think that can be off the table but I certainly think what I heard was let's keep them together let's keep those teachers together let's keep those kids together as long as we can I don't know that I

have the right idea that's just what I'm throwing out um but again going forward I don't want to see Band-Aid fixes by renting here renting there renting here I don't think it's an answer we we have that we have the the building on Main Street now I think moving the stone students in there is Absol absolutely the best thing to do we're putting them in a nice location I feel very comfortable that those kids and those

teachers are going to be in a great building they have a great playground outside they have they have the ability to do a lot with those with those kids in that facility so I feel really good about that and we need to fill it so now we have an empty School located in a different part of the city that should I agree with you take kids in from that

area but if we have to do a phased out approach to do that so that we can keep the tany community strong and together I want that I think everybody wants that 100% but we need to work together we all have to give and take a little bit in order to you know in order for the betterment of everybody and but I will still continue always probably I die to Advocate to for

the little guy as my kid call as my daughter said when we were talking about this and she goes but actually Mom it's the real little guy cuz they're little kids and I will continue to advocate for them and with that I yeld Mr car thank you so um I I I think overall The Proposal was really good I know you guys worked really hard on the proposal it was in our presentation that things got

modeled and lost uh and and out of a deep Regard in respect to the tany community because they've been such a successful neighborhood community for so long I really think that we need to consider them in this entire argument I think um Miss pereira's uhu explanation right now was was very much on point you know I I respect all those points so it leads me to ask Kristen um in the numbers that you're seeing now

for us to face compliance uh with with uh the special needs of the prek how how much were the numbers trending over the next your projection over the next 2 three years that I'm going to be very honest with you that's very challenging to capture right now they we have not been able to predict it in any reasonable way um since Co the numbers have fluctuated quite a bit and increased quite a bit um

I will tell you that we are um we are just opening that 10th classroom over at 2501 this year um it's approaching half full um at this point many of those children have have um April birthdays so they haven't started yet they'll be starting in the next several weeks that should get us through um our April and potentially a good number of our May birthdays but we are going to run into a

situation as we did last year where our kiddos who are qualifying um with uh late May and early June birthdays are going to be on hold until September um will have to come up with some sort of compensatory plan for them as we did last year I would say it's probably reasonable for us to say adding another classroom potentially at some point next year our our issue is we will never run

into a problem with compliance prior to the midyear our classrooms open very outside of the full day classrooms because those are our kidos who have been with us for a bit of time our um classrooms for our three-year-olds open relatively empty at the beginning of the year there are kids who started the second half of this year that are still with us and then all of our new kids

and so typically you know February March we're starting to say okay we've got a good handle on our numbers EI um refers 6 months in advance to us so we can project six months out what our numbers look like it's reasonable to say that come this time next year we're probably going to need one more room part of that is because so to your point Mr AAR about the student opportunities act and our

move towards more full day opportunities for kids so a lot of that work we did do and so going back prior to that we had very few full day classrooms in the district and they were sort of a couple of them were substantially separate they were kind of we were looking at our highest need kiddos um between that um prior to last couple of years prior to co and to last

year what we were able to do is we with opening several new classrooms we were able able to convert enough classrooms to allow every 4-year-old with a disability so remember we're still functioning off of a compliance lens but every four-year-old with a disability is currently able to attend a full day classroom that naturally also expanded our full day opportunities for children

in the community because our integrated programs kind of move along in that way and so we are we have hit a point where we are able to offer a full day slot to every child with a disability in their last year before kindergarten because our numbers have grown every year what that means is in order to maintain that every year I'm converting another half day to a full day to make up the Gap and so that's

where we're then having to back fill the second half of the year with our half day classrooms so I would say over the next couple of years until we stve Year we're probably looking at about a classroom or so a year to keep up so in in in uh I went to um the tany PTO last Wednesday and um it was very passionate and I have the deepest regard for their passion as a neighborhood small

neighborhood school I realize the demographics is Shifting in our city and we have to we have to work with our numbers as we do uh out of the deepest regard and concern for them uh I really really want to insist on keeping uh the teachers and the students as a community together in the best way that we can moving forward because I think that we can handle that and maybe consider a

phase phase in and phase out over the next 3 to 5 years in order to keep that Community together because they deserve it because their numbers have been great for a long long time and they've helped our overall City numbers you know to succeed over a great period of time uh and it it's also out of deep regard for the parental input that's a model that we need to try to forward for our other

schools that are underperforming to try to get more and more parents on board because parent advocacy Guardian advocacy brings a on Student Success I really firmly believe it absolutely and uh so the more that we can advocate for parent and guardian advocacy in all of our schools then I think we're going to build a better school model across the board and the tany school represents

that in in droves which is why I I I may want to support a phase in phase out model moving forward with this because cuz I know we have a compliance issue to deal with so that's what I would want to put the charge on you guys to see what we can do and bring it back to us I I don't know Mr chairman if we should keep this on the table or off the table um

you know that that's a call that we might have to make but right now it's off the table I like it where it's at CU I don't see any reason to rush into this judgment and give us a little bit more time to look into it so that's my recommendation I yield I would hold on one second so I would agree with what Mr Cory just said in that the phase out

approach I think is makes the most sense and after listening to the parents after listening to all of you we have to respect the fact that the building is what it is it's not going to grow a second floor other ones aren't going to shrink down to one so if we wanted to leave that entire Community all those children together we just do not we can put a pre in 2ks and do not fill the

school with KS right that's a 5e that every child that's at the tany school will be able to graduate from tany with their child I think that's a fair compromise and I think it's also something that's going to keep theal needs all the things that parents talked about but that would gain us two potential right off the bat next year then if we added a modular that's another two three you know but I think

that that's where I think everybody's going with and it's my belief that that's on a charge from anybody to the superintendent you don't have to give us Direction you can do it as part of just being thorough and being this is what the numbers show us this is what the the facts show us and create that and then deal with the full committee CU it's tabled in the full committee right this

was just a general update because I felt it's important this committee is doing it more work than most committees so I wanted it on the agenda for that reason people need to be heard and you guys need to have conviction with what you presented cuz I believe you believe it you know you guys looked at it didn't say I want a close sty we need you to have that conviction and show it in

writing and show it everybody say this is what we have while taking into consideration the parents and the children phase them out over 5 years I think that's the most viable way Miss bur how many uh can we have pre we can can we have pre how many pre- classrooms could we house at West or whatever you want to call multiple none none not even one on the on the ground floor the

problem with Westfall is is that um it's want to say it's 12 steps to get into we do have a ramp all right we do have a ramp which is the only right level way to get into West cuz my thought was maybe we could do some prek at westall and some pre at tany stop filling westall eventually move it over to I think the consensus at least from what I'm hearing my colleagues my you know

these gentlemen say what I said at the beginning um that yeah I think it's important to try to keep that school together but I don't think it means the walls of the ceiling I think it means the feeling inside right it means the teachers the students that engagement I think we need to really work hard to keep that together and I understand they a high performing school I have a lot of

opinions on why that is I don't think it's you know I think there's a lot of I yeah no kidding it's a higher performing school I get it because for all the reasons that we all know um I think having a small school in an area where kids may need it more even because they don't have that same advocacy at home and maybe would probably be more helpful for the school in general because I believe those

students who are in again a phased out approach but those students who are in the tany Spencer Borden area I think will still Thrive at Spencer Borden right um because that's also it's our highest performing school um but I think if you can maybe work on finding a way that we can keep that Community together in a phased out approach where we're keeping our teachers together who formed

relationships and we're keeping our students together that have formed relationships and the parents right through virtue of having kids in school together parents form relationships and often become support systems for each other so if we can organize that so that Community stays together I think that's I think that would make everybody happy any other questions I just want to be clear the phased out approach will

displace two teachers every year at tany at tany because if you're going to if we're going to I just I don't I don't want to surp I don't want to be at a meeting and then people saying that's not what you told us okay you do all the numbers but my initial there was I think two things right my my initial thing I said was could we move tany to westall

well that's what we want that's what and then all the teachers could stay there they never have to leave the teachers wouldn't be the teachers all together from tany go to West we don't take the kindergart we don't take uh kindergarten from that uh demographic we take kindergarten from the West do demographic but that kindergarten teacher from tany is still there she's getting new kids every year anyway right

and then it's phased out that way but all those teachers are still together in one school are still still a small school that they're all used to working at so we're not sending them off to a Munch lodger school or anything like that just relocating the school because we need to use this school for something else I don't know if that's the answer well that's what we when we went and met

with the staff on the Friday yeah certainly we were not in a position to say it's going to happen this way we just gave hypotheticals and one of the reasons one of the things we said was the best because that was their big thing wanting to stay as a unit right I abely so we said if that were the case and I I see Mr Mich was there at the

meeting right if that was the case then moving everybody at once would be the way we could preserve that staff as a community doing a phased in phased out like we heard people say phase out every year you phase out a a grade at tany if we did it that way and kept we would displace so the kindergarten teachers would not be there cuz we would add kindergarten we would add two prek the

following year add another two what I'm suggesting though is taking the tany community moving them to the other building together having first second third we right from that area next year you have first grade from that area and a new kindergart from that area the next year you have so that's what I mean by a phased out approach and then you'd keep all the kids still together that have

had relationships and you'd keep all the teachers still together that have relationships and we're still keeping a high performing School in that neighborhood yes that's and we're able to use that to house our our most needed population of kids because it's going to happen expansion is going to happen and it's it's a thing with you know these are referral based and a lot of times doctors aren't going to do it when

they're one or one and a half so it's two two and a half and then all of a sudden any kid who's in early intervention okay maybe you know they're coming but if they're not it's really hard for you to determine how many how many people um not everybody's going to take the service either right correct and not everyone would qualify and not everyone would qualify so it that number is hard

but I can I'll put money that it's going to keep increasing it's not going down especially everybody wants to build more apartment builds than in this city we don't have enough teachers we don't got enough fire we don't got enough police but let's build more apartment buildings don't even get me started with that that brings people that brings people that brings kids into the community so that

number is going to go up I'd rather have it so that next year we're not freaking out again and trying to rush things and and saying you have 30 days to figure it out we know what going to happen let's just kind of St doing it now so that we can have that phased out approach and we have time to do that I don't know that's anybody else have any comments Mr Cory

has one quick comment I just ask I just ask uh the team the administrative team to always consider and to be fully transparent especially because they deserve that transparency for for what they've been all these years they and that's all I asked for what I yield any new business no motion to adjourn made seconded all favor I thank you all