4.4.2022 School Committee Special Ed, Alternative Ed, Early College Sub Committee

i'm going to call to this uh this meeting to order the special education alternative edge and early college subcommittee and secretary please call the role mr again here mrs claravey yeah mr rodriguez here so to the fact please the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all went to the open meeting law any person

may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium and these are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible any citizen input there's no citizen input we'll move right on item 3.01 discussion and vote to refer

the evolve academy at derpy high school program of studies madam superintendent or designee yep so um mr doyle's going to share i just want to say when the durfee program of studies came forth before the committee this was not complete because uh evolve switched over to durfee um late in the year so this will be inserted in the program of studies and um uh ms doyle will go through it okay so

here is our addendum to the program of studies some of the main differences are a mastery based grading system so if you'll take a look on the first page you'll see that a lot of our project-based courses called transformative learning experiences or tles they're all graded in a mastery-based capacity so if a student earns exceeds of the competency it's equivalent to an a if they are meeting a competency it's

equivalent to a grade of a b and approaching is a grade of a c anything below approaching or below that level of proficiency will be deemed in incomplete or not yet and students have the ability to revise their work multiple times pretty much limitless times with a lot of feedback and support in order to be able to demonstrate proficiency and revise their work so that's one of the main differences of how we assess

student work a lot of our courses align to the durfee courses in terms of the number of credits that they would need so we're having the students meet the same number of derpy credits required but through different courses called the tles so if you'll see there's a breakdown of how many tle courses that they would need in english math science and social studies and what their equivalent is

in the durking minimum course requirements and it is exactly the same in terms of the time that students would take to meet the durfee requirements again it's just through a mastery-based system where they have to demonstrate approaching at that c level or above in order to earn credit for the course same thing with our health class or pact they'll still need two courses of help our advisory is in addition

so they will need to take advisory and a lot of that is our primary personal model where students are getting that one-to-one support and tracking of their graduation requirements support getting their work done connecting them to tutoring that's a little bit different that we also mean an additional requirement they'll still need to meet the physical education and wellness we also have a capstone

which is their graduation portfolio that includes them completing the fafsa completing a college application completing a transition plan that's going to show what their next steps are upon graduation and they also still would need to meet the mcas requirements so the total is equivalent to the derpy graduation requirements on the third page actually the fourth page you'll see a list of the courses broken down by

subject area of the tles all of these are linked to crosswalks of the common core state standards in this we work with our consulting organization that's our thought partner as well called spring point and they've helped us develop these tles and align them to all the common core standards a lot of them are power standards that we see are the most essential types of standards that

students need to be able to demonstrate especially when assessed on the highest stakes tests like mcas for students also s.a.t or what we would use as our metrics and we have lists of all of our courses broken down by subject area these are all project based and again in order for the student to pass the course and earn the credit they have to show that level of mastery otherwise they can continue

to work on it multiple times if needed you guys have any questions anybody have any questions i do okay first i was a little confused on the tles in comparison you have four different courses to the right okay under every major um course and then it says if tles during jury year you need four tles but it only equals one credit right all equal to one course sorry yes right so

it says four different courses over here but it has four tles over here entering after junior well junior so this can this would take into consideration students that we on board are in grade 10 so we're not taking students in grade nine so they would already have had their opportunity to earn the first year credits right this is if students are coming in with their freshman credits and they're behind yes

how many staff right now working in evolve eight eight all together and one of those is part of the um this is the like the the college stuff the capstone uh yes one of our english teacher right now spearheads the capstone along with our sac um so she'll do a lot of the revisions for college essays that students are writing and our sac does help with financial aid college applications and the transition

plan right and how many how many more kids this year compared to last year at uh rpa uh we doubled our enrollment this year right is is that one person enough to handle all this capstone stuff this year so this year it is um moving forward next year we're looking at um you know redefining different roles and possibly sharing some resources with some of the guidance counselors as well

they're not all they don't all have a capstone at the same time right they're afraid right thank you for now smarter already had my questions i i had a question so you had eight staff how did what does that break out is it so we have four teaches four teachers in each content area we have an additional special ed teacher we have a sac uh we have two paras and myself just one right now right

didn't we discuss that also no she she has one sack as they expand they will that's where it goes and you have 50 what's the number of 65.

so last year in the rpa was a lot of this in the rpa programmer studies we were in our pilot year last year so a lot of this was just piloting and we weren't in full implementation and we were still working under the traditional grading system right so i can see the links here to the map english the standards crosswalk so i'll have to look at that knowing that it's in a therapy handbook now

i'm wondering how they feel like if it's in the different handbook and the student can do certain things and evolve why can't they do it in a regular traditional school relative to the curriculum or even in the bottom of page three where it says like the world language waiver so you do an evolved capstone you get the waiver you're in a 74 pathway that counts as fine arts phys ed if they're participating in an

maa sport and all that are those durfee are those equivalent at derpy yeah so um they use the physical education in the chapter 74 cte pathway very similar to the general turkey waivers and also uh for mass core requirements for the colleges and do you see anything in here that would would cause any inequity between the traditional school knowing that evolves part of the derpy now so

do you feel there's anything in here that is uh like a red flag to no i think um it's just uh students are meeting their requirements in a different way but they've carefully designed their requirements and the coursework to make sure that students are learning comparable skills and meeting similar requirements and your you or the derpy administration is willing to stand behind that fact

yes like you know i'm i'm not being wise i'm just being honest like if you look at it and say well we're gonna do um more so like project-based competency-based stuff like that do you feel like that's are you willing to stand behind that fact so if i'm a traditional student but a student that struggles i don't get into evolve am i getting those same benefits or am i being graded under a different um

so um i think that um you know it is a different approach mastery is a different approach than the traditional system so that is definitely a clear difference to your your point and some of the evolved students are are much more engaged because of the different format but that is you know a difference where a typical derpy student who's behind would take credit recovery maybe through edge annuity um

or an after-school kind of credit recovery course whereas any ball everything is done through these uh transformative learning experiences where they're they're graded on the exceeds meets approach i think one of the things we're going to be looking closely at is mcas data and other data as we get you know some of our first data from being at durfee and compare it to you know students outside

of evolve and then we'll have we can have some more information for you about what that looks like i'm just reading the first line why i'm asking this says evolve academy is a competency-based pathway in durfee high school that's what i'm trying to get get to so i'm of the belief without having any data on it just my gut feeling telling me that you have a lot of kids at durfee

high school that are more that have are competent enough to have passed they could prove that they know english night but they fail for a variety of reasons suspensions attendance whatever else they have to retake it they have to go to summer school they have to so in my mind i'm i'm seeing this in here if i was one of those students i'd be like well i want one of those like

i can pass i'm smart enough to do english 10.

some kids might have passed mcas and what are we going to do for them to to but bubble them up and get them back on track without the traditional um so it's just food for thought that i think that's as this goes into the durfee program of studies it's now you're going to find yourself like why can't somebody else in the regular traditional do it because they're limited to is it 100 shares that

i think we were talking about like the expansion but it's a limited experience right yeah and over time we're hoping in our three-year plan that we're looking to propose eventually we would grow to 125.

so we do want to serve more students we know that there are a lot of off track students in derpy and we want to really make this an opportunity for students who want it all the students who want this because it's a choice and it's something that if they learn if they feel that they would learn best through mastery-based projects that might be a choice some students make some students

may not want this type of choice and we've learned that too that some are like no i want computer-based so it's really just an individual's preference of how they're going to learn best but yes we are hoping to expand this mrs larry yes just who what systems are in place to decide is it like you just said is it the student that decides okay if student needs credit recovery but is it through evolve

or is it through rpa like who decides those factors so our applications online and any student in the district who is off track and grades 10 or um 10 and 11.

we aren't onboarding seniors because it is competency based right so for them to be able to demonstrate all the competencies there isn't enough time at that point they're probably best served by a more traditional type of credit recovery but for students who are in their either their 10th or 11th grade and they're off track they have the ability to apply online they interview with us we ask them questions

about what type of learning environment they're looking for how they learn best what some of their future goals are and a lot of it is really is this what you're looking for and then we have students complete a shadow day and it can be anywhere from a day to a week of a shadow period where they're attending classes they're learning about the curriculum they're seeing if this is the type of environment they want and

then we talk to guardians about it we see if we have guardian support and engagement for it and it's really just up to students if we think that this is really going to be the best support for them but they have a lot of agency in it and that's part of the model is learner agency and students kind of advocating for themselves and finding what's going to work best for for them thank you miss fabrics um

question just kind of went off the window when when kids are in when kids are applying to get in do they have to apply when they're already in 10th grade and falling behind or at the end of ninth grade if it's like this kid really hasn't been able to stay on track are they eligible to apply at that point we have rolling admission so we accept applications ongoing we have students now that have already

we have three freshmen students who have already applied for next year um that we are interviewing and we know that right now they already know that they're kind of struggling and kind of lost so um they think this would be a good fit for them and they're actually they have siblings already in our pathway so that's kind of how they know about it so we're gonna have them next year but yeah

we have students that are applying even in ninth grade okay um and then what does attendance look like right now our attendance is about 75 to 76 it's not ideal it's not where we want to be at all by any means i would say two-thirds of our students are really showing a tremendous deal of progress so if we were looking at i have another hand i don't really really interested in

it but it's in the outcomes and outputs sheet and it has a few highlights about how the students are doing so far in terms of their work completion so what's different about a competency-based system is that there's more of an emphasis on work completion and academic output and growth not necessarily the attendance metrics since it's not so much a seat time based type of approach and a lot of these students

traditionally weren't showing success because of that seat time requirement but a lot of our students term one we had 40 demonstrate competency term two we had 55 and after this term that just ended we are now up to 76 percent of kids demonstrating one or more competencies so the academic growth of students is really growing and that's what we'd like to see so our goal for this year was that we would

have 80 percent of students being able to demonstrate one or more competency and we're almost at that goal um so our students even though our attendance is a little bit lower they are showing more growth academically so what's going to be the plan for the kids that aren't able to show confidence and growth in those areas or be able to demonstrate competency in those areas we're still working with students

because it is mastery based so students have multiple opportunities to revise their work we started a before school and after school tutoring program for kids and we've kind of been getting a lot of the guardian support to have students either come in earlier or stay later to get extra support so they're able to meet a lot of the competencies so they're getting even more intensive

academic support because a lot of it is students are buying into this that if they are not being successful they're not necessarily failing they're earning and incomplete and they still have the ability to have that growth mindset to to pass the courses they don't need to start over and they can't they just pick up right where they are this is very personalized to mr iger's point um i can see a lot of students

turning and saying i would much prefer to do this because frankly project-based learning competency-based learning is more developmentally appropriate rates how kids learn so i can see where you have tons of students in the building saying hey this makes much more sense for me because that's what it's going to look like once they're out of high school and we don't operate you know the rest of

the world doesn't operate on a grade-level system like like traditional schooling does so i i am wondering how that's going to play out just you know as more kids hear about this we do have a lot of kids struggling but it's not necessarily because the kids are struggling the systems don't always work for the kids so um i think that's all i yield when you mention that one or more competencies uh some you mean all four

subjects right or is that just one subject of the form it could just be one competency and the competencies aren't necessarily subject specific so for example we have one competency called academic discourse and it's really the ability for students to clearly present a lot of their ideas that they have in specific arguments using text to support their arguments or their claims and doing that in some type of

discussion based format in a class that can be in any content area class and a lot of our projects they culminate in more than just one competency so for example some of the tles have two to even three competencies that students have to show in their final projects so we we're saying one or more and it can be in a variety of different subjects that they're taking i'm just a little confused on that but we can

figure it out afterwards but when i see the chat that says english math science three courses four courses in my mind i'm just saying english you need four math you need four so if in any given year you need english math science a couple of electives like that's how i was envisioning that piece but when you add if they're only making with three quarters of the way through the year and they're only making

one of the potential competencies they're gonna have a busy fourth quarter otherwise they're not going to make the numbers that they might so they this is right now we're at 76 percent are demonstrating one or more so at minimum it's just one confidence here more we have a lot more students completing well over one competency um who are on track right now this year and making progress

and are on track for that um but at minimum we have 76 just completing one i i can get you the date on how many are completing so if i'm gonna have any if i'm a sophomore i come in as a sophomore how many competencies do i need move to be a junior we are not so much that you have to meet every competency um as part of our graduation requirements so our classes our tles

culminate in meeting a set competency so in order to pass that course and earn the credit from that tle you would have to demonstrate the final competency so there's a variety of different competencies so even if you are not meeting all of the competencies you will have the opportunity to meet most of them through of the variety of the courses so for example uh if you take examples

yes let me i'm gonna give an example this is a really complex it is it's a very complicated let me just let me just try to help so if you look on the total on page three the total of 100 credits under evolve it states equivalent of four english classes four math classes three science that's what i'm having a hard time so in my mind i'm saying somehow you need to

get a grade a competence whatever you call it for four english classes four math classes three science and if they're not necessarily english math and science then what are they are they just all around us so for example if you look at let's stick with english if you look at the list of all the english courses so for example a student this year could have been enrolled in slam poetry they

could have been in the dehumanizing hate they could have been comic bros they could have also been in the through my eyes course that right there would have been for tles in english if they were able to complete the course and demonstrate competency on one or more of those competencies in the final project they would earn credit for that course that makes sense so like each year they

have the ability to pass these courses to earn the credit but only if they demonstrate the competency on the project okay so and they have to finish all four of these i guess at the end they would have to finish for english they would need to finish four tles um if they are enrolled by the junior in english or six if they were on board as a sophomore so there's only four listed

yeah no that's right now that's all we have built out we only have four this year that we were offering for students okay one per term and i think we'll probably have more questions afterwards but how these four things just to stick with the english lead up to the english standards is where i'm coming from so if i'm a durfee student i have to take english nine for the year or semester or however the class is

but over and evolve i only have to pass slam poetry and i get the same one of the four necessary check marks that's where i'm having the slam poetry is aligned to the standards though that's what i'm saying so i i think i got to look at this to see how this is and is the rigor even equivalent in any way to the what you're saying it is i just think we need to

kind of look at it yep and if you look at the cr i know it's not printed out here but it is linked um i can also provide those links as well for the crosswalks and you can see they've done a very thorough deep dive of the main power standards that are found in mcas that are found in sat accuplacer a lot of those high-stakes tests that students need to be able to demonstrate

those very specific skills and those are all embedded within these units and directly tied to the competencies so i think you said the word you said units and so if you're thinking of it as an alignment to like a traditional school model we're thinking like the first term we focused on slam poetry right but if it is a traditional class you're working on like you know greek mythology or whatever

what you're really doing is just saying like it's slam poetry yes yes that's exactly okay yep you got it we're getting there but that begs the question and it's not for this meeting by no means but if this is good if this is rigorous if this is we do the crosswalk we do everything if this is the way then why the heck are we doing it at their well across the board we have to

collect data first to see if it's good if it's working so there that's what we just said it's brand new we're just starting it and if it yeah i agree with you that we may see other kids that are going to project-based learning is is the future there's a lot um so i think that we have to look to see how successful kids are and then we have to build more project-based opportunity opportunities for typical students

that's definitely good stuff let's try to meet again you know get some info i'll email you if we have to get some more data so we need to get a motion to refer this to the full community seconded protocol please miss drag yeah larabee yes miss rodriguez yes thanks for the presentation thank you thank you next up 3.02 discussion of early college update good afternoon committee members uh thank you for

giving me a few minutes uh today i'm really excited to talk about derby's early college program we want to start off by saying how appreciative i am over the past several years the superintendent as well as many have been very supportive of early college as we build and expand it um so i just want to talk a little bit for the education of the public what early college is in massachusetts and what it is in

durfee early college is a state initiative that's throughout the state and its real goal is to empower students from traditionally underserved communities or traditionally underserved subgroups and higher education and helped them to earn college credits to save time to reduce barriers that may exist as they transition to post-secondary life throughout the state on the second slide

you can see that there are 35 designated programs across 46 high schools in the state of massachusetts however down in the south coast fall river has been the first and only designated early college program recently new bedford and argosy over the last week got their designation for the second and third program in our region so it serves about 5 400 students statewide the state of massachusetts has a real

ambitious goal of scaling up to over 30 000 students in the next three years because they're seeing some of the success and outcomes related to the early college initiative statewide so as we update uh the committee and the public on early college at durfee it's all centered around uh the state's uh five core design principles which are equitable access guided academic pathways robust student support

connection to career and high quality and deep partnership before jumping into the update on the derpy specific design and program just one of the common questions that we typically get from students or families is how early college differs from traditional dual enrollment which has been around for a long time in fall river and other communities so some differences one of the main differences is that early college is

really centered around comprehensive support and that support takes place almost every day while the student is enrolled in early college classes it's also during the school day where oftentimes a traditional dual enrollment class will be in the afternoon or evening and this is to remove the barrier for students who may have after school obligations such as work or family early college is also

a three to four year career themed pathway where if you're thinking about dual enrollment more as a cart i can pick this one semester and not pick another semester i can kind of pick and choose classes in a variety of different majors early college is 100 free for students including books class materials and transportation and where oftentimes in dual enrollment the course may or may not be free but

the course is free oftentimes students have to pay for books or other materials another difference in enhancement in early college is the early college seminar piece which we're building in which is before students take early college college courses they kind of get a semester of on-ramping literacy skills college readiness skills so that they can be successful when they're taking the class

the formats for early college and dual enrollment are similar right now they're on campus or they could be virtual with a live stream sometimes in traditional dual enrollment there's also an asynchronous option and we try to stay away from that um we feel that live teaching is the best approach for our students so the mission and vision of early college focused on underserved populations in higher ed early college

at durfee is a student outcome driven pathway designed to increase post-secondary enrollment persistence and graduation for all students so we're really looking at a lot of data not just of how many students are earning college credit but as we move forward we really want to be careful and really focused on looking at persistence rates when students get to college higher ed graduation rates to see if

there is uh the difference like i think there will be achieving a credential so one of the initial core principles equitable access is really the foundation of early college at durfee continues to be open to all students but we're really targeting underserved populations some of the ways we do that is that we meet with teachers of english language learners and special ed ask them to identify students where we can

connect with families and students we also allow students to self-refer we have multiple info sessions our next one is april 13th and when we do that we have them in multiple languages so that families can get an idea of the early college program regardless of their primary language there's no minimum test scores or gpa requirements to onboard into our program it's a state requirement but we also believe in it

because people learn in different ways i'm also providing a lot of different support for students both before and during their college class so because of that we think the students can be successful where typically in a dual enrollment class you need to have a certain gpa before you're considered we don't have that requirement again all classes occur during the day and there's a lot of

one of the outcomes and goals that we're very carefully monitoring is are we serving the students who we want to serve underserved students in higher ed so our goal is to meet and exceed different durfee demographics so that our early college program looks like durfee does so you can see with our last early college class which is our second early college class how the program compares to the overall

student population we've we've met or we're close to meeting almost all of our demographics exceeding uh some we have work to do on on some which we're hoping to meet and exceed the next onboarding class which is the class of 2024.

our early college program continues to be based and centered around career-themed pathways so currently we have a business pathway and a health science medical pathways both for those who are at bristol community college we also have public policy social service pathway at bridgewater state education pathway at bridgewater state next year to expand with mouse dartmouth or adding a stem pathway as well the

pathway in the arts so the scope and sequence our classes are aligned to college major requirements either the specific major courses that you might find or one of those electives required for multiple majors something like an english 101 that's the requirement but maybe not tied to a specific career we think some of those more general classes have a lot of really good transferable skills that will help

students be successful in multiple classes another class like that is we have a public speaking course communications 101 that all students go through all the classes are mass transfer eligible meaning that they'll automatically transfer to any of the state or umass schools in the state and that they're often easily transferable to private schools uh just so you get an idea of what are some of

the courses that students take which is usually a two-year two two year or four semesters of college coursework so they have some choice and some requirements and these are some of the typical classes that students have taken over the last two years and each individual pathways you'll see some crossover for example for example psychology 101 is both in the business and the medical pathway and some

differences like uh marketing it's tied to business and enjoy the health care is tied to the medical pathways similar in uh bridgewater we have our education pathway and we also have social service public policy on pathways for students and you can see uh the classes that we're offering over the last two years so how does the design work this year typically students will take two college courses

per semester in addition to derpy classes so each semester in the fall they'll take two classes they'll take another two classes in the spring sometimes we'll accelerate or hold us hold students back from taking the two courses depending on their personalized academic situation we want to make sure that students are set up for success as you know or a college transcript is final can

have implications for financial aid and other things once they leave their fee so we want to make sure students are a success so the majority of our students take two each semester but not often in terms of the time of the day our students take traditional classes during the first four periods of the day like any other durfee student and our students and families really told us that they really wanted to have a

traditional high school garfield experience and to be involved in some of the other great things that derby has to offer we have students involved in cte we have students who may be in band or course or students who want to participate in different electives they're able to do so they also take some of their graduation requirements through the traditional therapy courses during the first four periods of the day

during periods five and six which are the last two hours or so of the day that's when they typically take their dual enrollment courses as part of the early college program they have their classes two days per week their college classes two days a week which is pretty typical for college classes and the other three days they have a support class and that's the class where they're getting

academic support and tutoring they're getting some college exploration and experiences and bonding as a community of support helping each other and making sure that they can be successful in their college classes so again i touched on this earlier but there are some differences between the two colleges right now with bristol uh community college in the fall this past year we were on campus at bristol

in the spring due to the vaccine requirements and about only about half of our students had the required vaccines at that time prior to the beginning of the spring semester we held our classes on durfee's campus with the bristol a professor live streaming in and the derby staff member there as well for bridgewater state they had the vaccine requirement from the beginning of the year but we were able to have the

professors actually come to durfee to do live teaching instead of live streaming uh the robust student support is the most crucial piece of computer college program so there's tutors assigned at every class ideally pre-covered we were thinking college tutors but this semester it's been either college tutors or durfee staff member for classes where there are no college tutors available they have one-on-one in

small group sessions with the students we also partner with jfy networks which is a non-profit organization out of boston to do academic tutoring and college readiness skills they'll do things like help students review essays talk to them about note taking some of some of those things on the days that they don't have a class or their one goal class and then probably the most major piece

of our support plan is our partnership with one goal one goal is a three-year program where a durfee teacher and about 25 early college students have a class their junior year their senior year and that one goal teacher actually follows them as an advisor during their first year of post-secondary education to support them one goal provides some of the curriculum and the support and it helps the students bridge

and go through a typical struggles and successes you know in the first two years of college so that's a really important piece it's the three days of the week that the students aren't in class the last a big uh core um a piece to early college is the high quality and deep partnership we're in constant communication with bridgewater state and bristol community college and now also umass dartmouth as we plan

for next year we have meetings uh usually bi-weekly where we talk about challenges successes sometimes with individual students sometimes it's more about like the comprehensive programs and enhancements we might want to make for the next semester or celebration events which we have multiple events over the course of the semester to support our students what those might look like one goal is also a huge piece we

collaborate with them you know on a weekly basis so we have one goal teachers and we hear their voice as well as the one goal organization itself provides input so that's a little bit of an update of where early college is in the design of the program um the next section just talks a little bit about the data why we believe in early college and why we believe that growth and expansion is so important

so the first slide they're just interrupts so um what i'd like to do is just the essence of time we know why you want it we know why derpy wants it we've had these already so i want to open it up for questions and the data there's some slides on the bottom that just basically show the success of the program how many students and all that so we can look at

that later but we have a lengthy agenda so i'm just trying to i'm sorry to cut you off but i enjoyed the presentation but i've heard it a couple times so let's open up a question anybody have any questions i do miss laramie um just quickly uh the parent info session is that to a zoom is that online yeah so there's going to be a live link so that students can um

join through google meet and there's it's also going to be on site on the same day that durfee has its parent teacher conferences so pre-recorded it's going to be live so the students will be able to our parents will be able to log in and listen to it live and also record it as well uh students our parents who are also at our feet for parent teacher conferences

we're holding it at 6 30 at the end of the event uh can come and see the information session when do the students at georgia get this information is it the beginning of freshman year is it the end of freshman year so they get um right now um they get informed general information during their freshman year but that right now we're moving the onboarding process earlier so we can offer more onboard points so we just

onboarded sophomores we had individual conversations with sophomore students and families and our next piece is to have information sessions to our freshmen students and families as well we want to onboard current freshmen by the end of may so our goal is to have 100 for each grade level on boarded by the end of the school year and you can see one of the last slides shows the applications to date

currently we have 200 applications from students in grade 10 and 166 from grade 9.

but it by the end of it so you start at the beginning of their freshman year i think that was like right at the beginning yeah they had they have information um but the formalized info sessions happen at the end of freshman year okay so there's um one of the exploratory uh courses that derpy offers is a career in college exploratory so general information is shared during then as well as

school counselors go into classes twice a year and again repeat it there as well right the partnership with umass is that going to be housed at durfee as well or would they be umass campus it's going to be a mix right now it would be on durfee's campus for the 11th grade year then they would have like a summer bridge experience on umass dartmouth campus and then senior year would be a mix of

on campus at umass dartmouth and on durfee's campus pending the subject professor variability vaccine mandates we're still trying to work through those logistics with our students you mentioned comprehensive supports at school is that the same one goal support class is that what you mean by the comprehensive correct support and the two the the tutoring which happens outside and one of the things we're

adding for next year is a 10th grade class so any student enrolled in early college before they even take their first college course will get a semester early college seminar but essentially it's some foundational literacy skills that they'll need to be successful in college coursework some college readiness skills and college exploration thank you ms rodricks when they're going out to say pcc or ms

dartmouth from bridgewater are they in a classroom with just derpy kids is there cohorts or are they mixed in with other college students that are taking that particular little course currently they're just in a cohort model okay so that section from that school is devoted just to jesus correct with our umass model there may be kids once we go on campus there may be kids from the new bedford high school as

well but it would be a high school culture would the same be true if they have opportunities over the summer because you have optional opportunities in the summer yeah so they have they'll be both so right now we're offering two classes in summer one which at bristol community college starts uh the fourth week of may and runs to the first week of july and that'll be just a cohort model just the turkey students

and then our students will also have an opportunity to take summer three which is july and august and that would be a general class and there could be other adults or other students during that time do they still get the same level of support from the summer not so not as much support over the summer um for summer one they will because it's during the school year most of it is during the school year yeah

last year how we did the second summer was when we had a counselor who was in summer school who also did check-ins with the students in early college classes and we had one math teacher who was also a one goal teacher who also provided academic tutoring support but it wasn't an everyday kind of built-in model here how would the kids access that over the summer would they have to ask or

are they on a regular rotation so we know how great teenagers are about asking that absolutely yeah so that's something that we're looking to improve upon because the check-ins were regular they were every week but something we've learned and one of the reasons why we feel like the 10th grade class is so important is that student students are always truthful with the help that they need

so you can say how you doing did you turn in everything yes fine but that might not always be the case and sometimes it's due to a lack of skills or they get success so the more support we can provide on the front end in addition to concurrently we feel will increase the outcomes it's the summer time and i think a lot of students figure out whether or not they are um

i don't want to say cut out but if they're summer students right i know lots of folks that go to traditional four-year schools that that don't take courses during the summer because they know they're not going to be able to

so i have just a few questions and probably things that you can get to us but i still have a hard time understanding the rigor of a class in early college or just high school students and i said this before relative to a dual enrollment so as miss rogers just said if i'm in dual enrollment i take a class and this side of the table is college kids and this side is the high school kids and

and you know mrs the teacher we know everybody's getting that same level of college class for some reason i just can't and nobody's been able to either show me the equivalent rigor i i everybody says it's just like the college classes all this and then you hear well it's all just a cohort of dirty kids and then i've asked around to some kids and they know they can't really identify that it's really a

college class but they're getting college credit so i know it sounds good it's a thing around the state everybody's throwing money at it all this stuff but i for one still can't really understand i know what the mission is you know it's all good stuff they're getting extra support like you're telling us they get three days a week for school they get two weeks so two other days of another support but

poor kid is not in early college is he getting that same support he's sitting in class five days a week what support is that regular kid getting as opposed to the early college i'm not looking for answers but this is just the thoughts that are on on my plate you mentioned a one goal teacher is that a different teacher correct i thought at one time the one goal was like a council one person that got paid

and to sort of be like the um yeah so there is so then um the one the one goal teacher is actually like a different teacher like we have history teachers math teachers english teachers who teach it three days a week as a fifth class to support the students in addition to that there's an early college specialist who does a lot of the small group tutoring that's an instructional liaison

who works with students helps coordinate logistics et cetera and supports the wonderful teachers but the in class every day with the 25 students so what are they if if they're teachers and they only teach three days a week what do they do the other days uh so the three days a week um they get stipends for essentially teaching on their their extra class during their prep periods so they still teach our regular four

classes just like every other teacher and this is in addition to those which is why we needed more teachers on the budget we've heard correct we're trying to help with some of that extra stuff so i just think in equity when i look at it i just look at equity and we do are we really doing that for other kids that aren't in early college it's just a thought but if you could get us

the whole committee cross syllabus for each of the courses that have been offered over the last several years as well as what it would be like in english something so are they getting credit for english let's say english 11 and they're taking a college course instead or is this in addition to the requirements of duffy high school so most of the classes built in are similar to elective classes but we do have

graduation requirement classes as well and english is one of them so english 101 our seniors take instead of their senior english class right so what i'm looking for is what does the syllabus look like in the expectations for the college course versus english 12 or whatever other equivalent because i truly want to be sold on this but i haven't gotten there yet in general uh how about i'd also like to get a great

analysis so what does it look like for all the kids that have taken early college classes what do the grades look like you mentioned before there's no requirements of students so you could potentially have students that were trying to ramp up to take these courses they're not ready and what what does that look like the kids fail does anybody fail not looking for that this is for somebody to get to us

the other thing is when you um if a student is going to take the early college with just the high school students has there ever been both you know like with college students or that just total dual enrollment because i know that during covert it wasn't not a real good question asking because the classes were online but if it's early college i i just think it needs to be with college kids it shouldn't be with just

our own yeah so um it's typically been you know we've only been early college designated for two years and during that time has been covered and a lot of the work that the community colleges and the state colleges are doing is really to push kids away uh from the old dual enrollment model and into the cohort model for several different reasons it's easier to offer support to students in addition it's more financially

feasible you can purchase a course for a lot less than paying each individual seat so like for example bristol community college even in their traditional dual enrollment offerings now only offer cohort for the classes that they offer for free so it's only students who are self-paying right now who are in the traditional dual woman condom where they're on campus with a mix of college students and high school students

all right my last question that i had already written down was how much does this program cost and that's a question that would come from you to this colleges to whoever because what i think it it probably hasn't even been looked at because they're just throwing a lot of money at the program what you just said about dual enrollment it to me across the state is a problem so the state never funds dual enrollment

properly but then they're going to criticize dual enrollment they should be paying paying full rate for the kids that are in high school if they want to give them dual enrollment credit not just when it's convenient or and it's not your this isn't your problem but from my angle i've been around here a long time and they haven't funded dual enrollment properly so let's not fund dual enrollment

properly but let's do all kinds of money at early college and nobody's even doing an analysis of what what what would it be if we did that earlier if we can pay colleges more we could maybe support it almost feels like there's a missing link somewhere so if we want to get kids into college early college then give them early graduation and let them go to college if they're truly ready for college

i personally don't think all kids are ready for college but if that's what we keep on going to oh this kid's a sophomore he can take 18 credits of college it's minimizing what it is put him in college then let's graduate them early they pass mcas they're ready to go to bcc full-time pay their full rate and let them go to college for nothing that's to me would make more sense than some of what

you know what we're angling for with this and i applaud you for trying to this is the model everybody's telling you so we're trying to fit into their box but i just don't feel like i've been i haven't been sold on it uh totally at the current uh still early for massachusetts on outcome i will say some of the some of the initial data about students enrolling in college after high school graduation and

persisting in college two or three semesters down the road have been really strong for the early college model as well there are states such as new york texas and others who have been doing early college for about 20 years and there's some real strong data especially some reports from the american institutes of research that i can share with you under the superintendent that talks a little bit about the

outcomes and why the model is successful when done correctly yeah we also haven't been elected in this community i've heard numerous times from the people of bcc and other community colleges across the state that kids aren't ready for college everybody needs to do remediation when you get to college so if that's the case and we believe that that is true then now we're saying that all of those

kids that need remediation have earned 12 credits in college before they get to college like where's the overlap here of if they if they need remediation in order to get just to step on a bcc but now we're saying those that same population because you can't make two populations now we're saying that they're ready for big walking the dog with 12 credits or 18 credits in college that's the part that is just you know

it's not really for i'm just voicing some of my concerns i'd love to be a greater supporter of the program but under the current model we need some more data and information i do appreciate all the graphs and the information that you can share it's the flavor of the month in my opinion everybody's talking about it i support it in theory but we need to look at it a little stronger as we go

forward any other questions um i have a question about students with disabilities how are we supporting them in those early college classes so the student students with disabilities connect them with the office of disability if they're willing to the schools of disability to the colleges and they get can get specific accommodations based on their disability during the classes we also for example with one of our

students with disabilities we have our one-on-one pair professionals to support that person in the classroom with the coursework teachers who typically pair with a college professor when it's on campus who can do some of that scaffolding and support for all students including students with disabilities when the kids go to the the office of disability services or whatever campus are they

prepped for that ahead of time because a lot of our kids don't know what's in their ieps and they know the support they've been getting but if you ask them you know what do i need for something in a college class i'm thinking of you know the 15 year old sophomore are they going to be able to really go down to the office of disability services at uvs dartmouth and say these are the supports

that i've been getting in high school so the supports that i get yeah that it's hard for any student including a student with disabilities so i agree with you uh it is hard and it doesn't they don't always disclose everything even if they do disclose some of the strategies we've used so far is that we've done had the office of disabilities do a presentation in the class for the students

we've also offered it to parents during parent information sessions we've done an info session for the special ed teachers who are students liaisons so that they can also have conversations with parents and students during their check-ins and performing meetings but that's something that we're continuing to work on one of our goals is to continue to expand access for more students with disabilities can

i just make a suggestion about that just with other kids that i've worked with that have transitioned into college settings so not from a baseball level what's been helpful has been to go through their iep with them and have them just come up with a list concretely of this is what my iep says but this is actually what it looked like in the classroom like this is how it's been operationalized so when they go down to

the office they just have it right in front of them if they choose to race that'll be their choice but if they choose to it's in front of them and then you're teaching them those self-advocacy skills along the way i'm not saying it's going to work for everybody it's just what i have found helpful in working with kids making that transition thank you anything else following up on that so it sounds like

at the end of the high school career isn't there a transition meeting at the end of the transition iep meeting where this should be yes maybe memorialized in the maybe a document of absolutely that we can assist with uh here's your operationalized you know this is what it was here this is what it looks like in the real world so that so just to edit on that portion every student who's graduating and moving on

from from durfee gets a student summary of performance which kind of gives uh basically exactly what you stated it gives where they were at where they left what their skills looked like what are their strengths what their areas for growth and then what are some of the accommodations and modifications they may need moving forward whether that be in the post-secondary setting or in the job setting

what does that look like is it a form is it a yeah it's a pretty standard form uh all districts are supposed to give it to our students who are graduating typically their liaison will fill it out because they should be the one who knows the best along with their iep and services and they review that with them and they provide them a copy of their iep their last round of testing as well as the ssp

so they can take that onto post-secondary or look for accommodations in their next employment whatever could you please send us a copy without the names sure you're so curious what it would look like and yeah do you have a guidance counselor for early college or is that was that on the just at one point is like one for vocational is one yeah for the upcoming school year we requested a further college academic teacher

someone who could teach the sophomore students some of those literacy skills and some of those college readiness skills prior prior to them taking college courses so that you know remedial work that a student might need when they enter college we're trying to figure out ways to do that while they're in high school so that they can get the skills that they need to kind of be successful so that was the app so

but you don't have a guidance counselor for early college is that something that was once on a wishlist somewhere and it never got through we've we've discussed what's the best way to support students currently uh we felt like uh having the early college students split up amongst different counselors is the best way to support them so that it's you know counselors are very knowledgeable about all the supports

and the program and can talk to our students and families so their caseloads are low enough to do that because we have the counselors correct we're about 250 to one at the high school which is a really good place to be at for us anything else thank you let's move on nope we don't need to refer to the discussion and we'll get the minutes and what i'd like to do is try to summarize the meetings

maybe in a one-page document or two-page document so that the full committee that's not here gets to see what it is and i think moving forward as a committee we need to sort of make that a more formal process so just root for thought of like the operational requests we had this meeting and here's the summary of the meeting just so it puts it on record that we're having these and and all that so three point

zero three update on the rob madeira's resiliency prep academy good evening um it's a pleasure to be here again i'm curious brooks principal of rlm resiliency preparatory academy so there are several areas of data that i'll be um reviewing with you here um as okay um that i'll be reviewing with you here the first is the intake data from the school on that first on that second page after the cover page

you'll see at the top that last year during the 2020 2021 school year we had a total of 112 intakes this year so far as of april 4th we've had a total of 163 so that's you know quite a bit of a increase there already so far um for a second you happen to have that in 1920 i do not have the 1920s just get that when you when i first read this the

first thing that came to mind was it was the code video and it really wasn't good data so right i know i don't expect you to have it today but if you get that for us that's okay

okay um you'll see in the bar graph right below the um the sending the referrals from schools and the referral enrollment from schools right below it is a table um with the same information but with the numbers written in on the table in every case except for two the total enrolled are the same as the total deferred the only differences are durfee which had a total referred of 90 and but there

were a total of roll of 81 and the parent center which had a total referred of 61 but there's a total enrollment of 56 and that's because some students um choose to go to high set or ged rather than coming to rpa um or in a couple of cases their um sunday school decided to you know take them back after you know rather than um go through with the referral but and almost in every

other case you'll see that that they were all enrolled into the school um so as i said before at a previous meeting when we get a referral when we get referrals we start working right away we try our best to see if there's any students who have um arguments conflicts with each other because coming into the school that can cause a lot of fights or can cause some you know ongoing um um

difficulty between the students we try our best to read through them as quickly as possible but at a very quick pace it's not always easy to get every single one we made a small sort of artistic depiction of what it looks like when it comes in i'll just pass this around

you can see that i'll wait until you get it you can see that rpa is in um is in trimesters and our sending schools have semesters and quarters so sometimes that causes a little bit of a hiccup in terms of having things moved in intake as smoothly as possible in terms of making sure that grading and percentages of grading um matches um you'll see that sometimes it's a little bit difficulty in when a student comes

in they'll be right in the middle of a unit sometimes and and that could be very difficult for the students to acclimate in um we did capture some um statements from teachers and staff about you know what some of the difficulties are when they come in right away and they come in at a very quick pace and they're in the middle of a unit and um and also when they go from quarters to

uh trimesters which does make quite a difference to the students when they when they enter um continue in addition to the intake data that uh that i shared with you i also have some suspension data and as i said we work very quickly with the intake process to be able to take the students from the schools from the ascending schools that are sending them um and as a result it is you know

sometimes at a quicker pace than we would hope we do sometimes have suspensions and but you will notice one thing in the middle column there that says the number of enrolled students suspended at least once you see that those numbers are a bit high but if you take a look at the next column that says number of enrolled students suspended at least twice the number does go down significantly and that's because

after they get there we have a chance to work with them that we have a chance to um get them used to the the culture and to no this is not a place where you can just come and and do whatever you want we do have a culture here we do expect you to work the number of of um incidents does go down significantly so if we were able to like have some time

with them before um being placed into classrooms or being placed straight from intake into into the onto the you know right into the classroom i think that that's something that we would be able to have lowered all together so um as you said as i said again the number does go down as we as the student stays with us the number of out of school suspensions also is there there's only two that are

long term and that's because of serious felonies that those students have committed that um deem some serious danger to students in the school so they are out on a 37 and a half page the um the next one is the attendance information and attendance is something that we've been spending a great deal of time on it is not what we want it to be the attendance is there from the past

four years um but again we do get a lot of a lot of students who are sent to us because of attendance issues but even with that we we try to get them as soon as possible to get into the culture of the school when they come we try to do something with the students that gets them involved with the other students right away to belong to the you know family of rpa but

as i said we do have to work at a very quick pace that is a challenge but these are attendance numbers we work with them a great deal and as i said they're not where we want them to be yet um the next table of data is our academic information um you'll see the breakdown by grades across uh it's with a breakdown by grades across grade levels there um 11.93 total of students who received a's

this school year so far at the end of the second trimester however also 37.08 who did receive fs and the large number for that is due to attendance issues so that is something that as i said again is is a concern to us there was a there was a question about ingenuity and if edge nudity was the core curriculum at one time i believe it i know that it was the core curriculum at

one time however now we do use the um district curriculum in math the carnegie curriculum with um science we are working with the open syed and project lead the way and with ela we are working with the writing revolution and using the district scope and sequence um and matching the standards in there with the um with the mapping as well as with the social studies and the thematic maps in that area

so this is just a very quick uh take a look at the data and if you have any questions i'll be happy to answer them any questions just miss larry are you the only school on trimesters right now to my knowledge uh elementaries and trimesters and that they used to be in quarters but then they switched over to trimesters but i think that they're going to propose to go back to quarters so four semesters right

that's it for now i have a few questions so you can thank you so just going to the from the front of the proposal i'd like to see when i had asked for some intake data i'm looking for what months we were talking about how many last time we got a number of there was between september and i think january there was 90 students whatever the number was i'm curious to see by month how many

were in each of the what were the intakes when we had the requests for the guidance council for intake the um suspension data is somewhat interesting i'm looking at the enrollment uh on that page of this grade seven and eight of only you know 45 students total in the uh seven and eight category while at the same time i i think there's evidence of some real needy children in our middle schools

so the fact that i see that so low is is concerning to me in that i'm wondering if we're utilizing the alternative school for helping the other middle schools i'm not looking for an answer just that's what's kind of looking at the data on that at the same time the suspension rate is higher for the seventh and eighth graders versus the 9 10 11 and 12 so i'm curious to see what

if there's any analysis on that are the expectations amongst the folks that are issuing the suspension similar are they different uh do you do seven eight nine is that how seven eight nine ten eleven two seven two so it's like saying that it was two different seven eight nine is one yes administrator doing the discipline correct doing the other so yeah but we but we speak right we speak through each um

incidents we do yeah we do collaboration so and i don't have the info i don't have the data maybe something we could get i'm a student in ninth grade and i do something i swear with a teacher something whatever what do i get for a penalty versus when i'm in 12th grade is it different is it similar that's some of the digging into you know deep into it but when i look at the

three numbers uh 65 71 46 for the 789 and then 29 30 and 4 for the other side there's either there's something else there going down to the attendance i'd like to request the attendance by grade level because i think one leads to the other so you got 50 of the students failing in 12th grade you said it's by attendance uh i was thinking right off the bat looking at this data that

we're not those 12th graders who are going to be potentially our graduates if they're failing at a rate of 50 they they're not getting suspended that means they're probably not doing anything bad but they also may not be there so that would be just another question that i had when you look at the 12th graders i think you had enrollment here by grade level right six so if we had 69 students enrolled as 12th graders

what is the your school's projected number of graduates oh um it is in the right now it is in the high 30s if i'm not mistaken i believe it's 38 if i'm not mistaken 38 students projected to graduate right yes we can we can get you there oh yes i would just say not the kobe year you know i think that data isn't really worth doing um but

38 is way too low as far as this members um opinion on how many students that we have across the district it's not only your students but between the high school and we've seen numbers in the high 70s in the past 80 whatever and some of that might come if you're getting an influx of kids you know for the fourth quarter i think sometimes that happens so that number might go up but i think it's

validated for us to get to see you know how things are going and that goes hand in hand with the ingenuity piece i know you talked about having the core curriculum not being at genuity now but the districts scope and sequence can you provide us anything um to sort of prove that yes you know like i think that's valuable to see so if uh just like we talked about before the

students in english 12 at durfee or in the math whatever the senior math is what you're saying here is that you're using the same uh mechanism for curriculum that durfee's using so if i went to a durfee class if um if that's the case and correct me if i'm wrong but that's what i heard you say so if i go to a class of uh algebra 2 at durfee

and i go to a class algebra 2 at your place it should be very similar although you're on trimesters you should actually be probably ahead of it ahead of the different one yeah it should be similar but it should be similar so that's kind of where what i'm asking for on that and my last question is the number of overage and under credited students on your entire enrollment because that was

always over the last i've been back on this committee for five years or so that was always the issue we had too many kids that were over age under credit and that was where the model of ingenuity would come in to bubble up like so the legions and mission of the school wasn't it was to help the whole system right bubbling up the students for lack of a

better way to say you know i'm a 16 year old 8th grader i want to be a 21 year old graduate so bubbling those kids up via edge annuity uh that i think that was the rationale for why there was trimesters so if i needed to get like three maths done i can do boom boom boom and one here even with edge annuity so i could test into some which you put

later on but you'd be able to bubble up those children so i'm curious to see out of your enrollment how many are over age on the credited and how many have you shifted your school shifted to increase their grade levels so with these seventh grade seven eight nine ten eleven twelve in the is it going up or is it going down have you moved the eighth graders to ninth ninth greatest attempt yes

so yeah and we do use edge annuity for for that and as well as for the three to five program as well as for the homebound uh students as well and for the um companies yeah if you just get us data i think it it means a lot to uh to us but thank you for the presentation um i know we talked about attention doing some things differently or whatever yes i think that this is step

one to get more data and then if we have to meet again to go over anything else we'll be happy to meet again to go over any of those suggestions but baseline getting all this data the feedback would come the only thing i would ask the superintendent is to get us if there is plans to maybe do something different to send it to us early so that we don't wait into a meeting because sometimes it's very

difficult to uh to read and try to figure it out so maybe even send it to the whole committee if this is if there's such a proposal of some type okay then we can digest it and then two weeks from now we can dive in at the meeting rather than just get it on the spot okay and i guarantee you have a question now there you go mrs rodriguez um when we're

getting all this data can we get a better understanding of why kids are being referred sure because i think when we're looking at like how we're going to change if we're going to change what we're doing like what our population looks like and in the past it looked one way and i'm sure now it looks very different because the world is very different but you know i remember when the school like

sort of first opened i was working at another community-based agency and the goal was really to connect kids and families to resources out in the community so we would have community-based resources directly at those intake meetings and it would be a two to three week long process that's how it was when it first first opened um and then you know i i wasn't there anymore so i really didn't know

where that went but again the reasons for referral looked very different these were typically the kids with less credit recovery issues and more disciplinary problems but they didn't necessarily need therapy day school model they needed this type of model so i'm just wondering what are kids why are kids being referred now okay right now but just yeah we'll get all that information okay

and we'll send it to the committee okay mr anything else no just one more less just a comment i thought so you had mentioned that some students in that 80 that applied at durfan and some chose to go to the high set yes or other things so i really feel like we as a system need to look very closely into the high set program and i think we need to look at it in the

lens of what's best for certain kids in certain situations as well as advocating to the legislature to make some changes around the hiset program because they're asking us to do some things that are just not good for kids or they're almost impossible to make up so we're going to take we take students that are way way way behind that we need to figure out all these crazy ways to get them their credits and

then we throw them at your school and say well you do something with them and i have experience working with a student in the hiset program that was not he was ready for college or workforce or something else so we worked together to try to get him a high set and he was brilliant he was ready he was motivated and it turned this kid around like like you wouldn't believe because

they they need to quit like i've been in school for so many years i'm ready to move on i want to go to college trade school something else or the workforce and we're sitting there saying let's make this for two more years make it until you're 20 years old in high school if you're a 17 year old freshman having that conversation with them to stay for four years is stupid in my opinion and i'm just being

brutally honest so i think we we all in the education will look at high set we don't want to do it it's a ged a lot of people look down on it but if we combine it with some of the same things that drew was just talking about that these kids can go to college so get him a high set we shouldn't have to drop a kid out of school and lose our hooks into him as

counselors and their supports and say hey go to a community agency and get your high set we should be able to do that in-house in my personal opinion and we shouldn't be afraid of it we should say if we're doing what's right by kids it should be an option it's all i'm saying and if you looked at it i think that in a future meeting maybe we can dedicate a

time to heaven you all do some analysis of what's the pros and cons of it you know i worked it myself and i feel like it's a viable option for certain kids so have been the alternative school principal i think i have to throw that out there to say i'd love to hear the people's insight maybe try with a few kids see what it's like let's do a pilot something like that so we can um

we can move them on to the next level of whatever they're going to go through thank you any other questions we're talking about multiple ways of teaching kids and i think that's that's the reality we need to be able to teach kids in multiple different ways as opposed to they're all going to go to durfee we're all going to get they're all going to be there for years you're all going to get

a diploma at the end of it that's not reality for a lot of our kids and that's not a bad thing so if heights that's the way to go and that's the way to go i think it's at least something to look at that's all miss books do you have anything else you'd like to add um no no um it's just that i did have some conversation with you and that's one of the things that

similar to something that we were talking about i didn't mean to seem in polite no no no i'm not that good at all i just didn't want to before you move on i do appreciate your presentation i think the conversation you probably had was a very good one because we're talking about what's right for kids let's move this thing in the right direction and don't be afraid to bring up

a ged high set or whatever else like i don't feel like that's being a negative in any way so let's let's have future conversations about it and maybe we'll meet if we have to do another meeting related to anything with your program that we dedicate a little more time you know i'm speaking from experience but i'm not that i don't know everything right i can just tell you in my

experience it was very good i'd like you all to look at it and say would this be a viable option for some of my kids and if that's the case then let's try it and if we you know we have to do what we have to do with the legislature i told my friends in the legislature some of this stuff and i'm going to be sending them a letter myself

saying this is what we need to do in some ways uh going forward so thank you thank you so let's move on to the next one thank you for the presentation i would say 304 we address those together correct exactly referral data so 3.05 budget review and special education positions and the reason why i put this on was because we did talk about some new positions it doesn't have to be

a long conversation what i wanted the committee to be able to do was ask any further in-depth questions i think some of the positions we talked about already so if we could do maybe a high level overview of what's out there and then we'll open it up to questions if you have none we can move on sir mr lewis so uh as print budget requests for the 2223 school year the office of special education requested

six positions consisting of one district-based bcba one speech and language pathologist two speech and language speech and language pathology assistance uh one certified occupational therapy assistant uh as well as one team chair the majority of these requests are compliance based uh as right now for the district vcbap were having to pull a lot of our vcbas out of other schools in order to

meet some consult needs but also one lacking pieces that typically our district-based autism specialist bcpa position provided a lot of intervention at schools to help keep kids in less restrictive environment and really coach and consult to schools to help really teachers address behaviors in the moment but it was an effective support which has been kind of a missing component as well

similarly for our speech and language without pathology folks as well as in our occupational therapy this is really just to create really capacity in our caseloads and provide for proper planning and really kind of we'll say case notes and progress notes for them to do those pieces um right now i'd say they're stretched a bit thin especially around lakotas uh that are some way of really servicing uh just too

many schools on a week-to-week basis they're having to go to too many locations um it doesn't work well for consistency and just their planning time and lastly uh looking just at we're looking at a major increase for overall and special education students uh from the start of the school year and particularly at derpy looking the students are going to be up and coming from durfee

we're looking at a significant increase anywhere potentially up to 170 students as from where they started this year which would definitely require another team chair up there to be able to facilitate the amount of meetings that happened up at derpy given the diverse populations we have up there and that all four sub-separate programs feed into the high school um so that you know definitely is a high level

any questions

i'll jump in uh just quickly so when we add up uh i see that you put the rationale here which i like feedback about the bcba positions and the cluster coordinated positions the only question that i would have on on this feedback would be what is the workload for each of them is it equitable uh it's almost impossible to make it exact but is there any total like um you know my caseload is my workload is

twice as much and we're in the same position is there any of that within either the cluster coordinator or bcba and are they doing different i work for ms laravey so she as a cluster coordinator i do uh whatever all kinds of different things because i'm certified as a vp and it's not but i work for her and i don't do those so he's there so i think across all schools caseload is actually pretty comparable

considering all of our middle schools have uh two significant sub separate populations and our cluster coordinators and bcbas no matter what role they're in are supporting all of the sub-separate programs in each school so numbers that one way pretty are pretty consistent across the board um in terms of duties i think the only piece you know looking at between cluster coordinators and team

chairs is the evaluation piece to be plus according to the evaluation piece and then our bcbas are primarily evaluating our professionals where our cluster coordinators have the capacity for the licensure to be able to evaluate the teachers but other than that the requirements across schools are pretty consistent principles have been great uh about really supporting these positions and knowing kind of what is

their role and responsibilities in school um i think we can definitely get some more breakdown in terms of what the actual case numbers look like in chapter five and when you all those other positions the coda i believe you've mentioned at the meeting that what you what you've asked for is what you need at the present time like it's not it's not any glaring uh we really need another speech

person but i didn't want to ask for it because of no no pretty much we got yeah and this is allowing us to have growth next year um that will get case loads would be an appropriate amount uh that you know our lead slp has really looked at the case of one of our supervisors at each and every school um and made sure that we're going to be able to ha add significant capacity if we need

to um also still preserving that planning time for those folks mradricks he knows i just need a minute um so when you when asked about students not receiving services do we have in here i didn't see it the first time that's the next item oh i'm sorry

no this was just a discussion we just wanted to let everybody dig in a little bit more i do think it's valuable to have these meetings to like you submitted some stuff in writing which i think is important so now we can all read that other members can read it whereas if we didn't have the meeting we didn't put this on there we wouldn't so i think it's a good practice

i'm going to keep saying that we we get this we get the info now we know what's happening and then we're ready so thank you for the pre-leading presentation thank you so we'll move on to 3.06 i'm not sure if anybody has any questions related to the iep student services update very informative i thank you for that mr actress you're now now with your strengths so how many did we have an understanding of how many

kids were not receiving services as they were identified on the ipa i knew you asked the question so uh we identified six physicians throughout the district they married from speech and language to academic services throughout the district they were primarily academic services that's where we do have a few open positions but for all those students we did issue the interruption of service letters they

went home to families and guardians and really explained that you know currently there's not a provider in place your child is with an educator they may not necessarily be certified so if they are with an adult that usually what we're looking at for the majority of these is that we just it's not a person who's certified and specialized content specialist so they are getting at least that content expertise uh but

right now as we know you know statewide we're facing shortages everywhere right but how many kids did that affect uh the specific number i don't have off the top of my head i could certainly figure that out for the number of letters we sent out um we'll get that for you afterwards and how long did that last some of them are unfortunately are still open as all of those letters kind of

detailed is that we look to develop the compensatory plan once the position is filled i think we have filled at least two of them one was at morton where the speech and language pathologist was resigned on us very unexpectedly but that position has been filled and i would say that person is absolutely amazing um and is doing a great job on the compensatory piece at the same portion at the same time

and i think one other of the teaching positions has been filled at this point i think we're also very close to filling the derpy speech position which is great news and we were able to compensate at least on the services portion for durfee and that we were able to allocate additional slpa time so at least we had students getting their services really it's just been a strain on the

department in terms of the evaluation and consultation piece so that was going to become my question so you it's great that you can fill the position but then how does that person then fill the position and provide compensatory services so some of them will be done during the school year we'll look to have that capacity we have some folks who will you know look to develop those plans to meet students either it

would have been typically we'll compensate them or after school if that's what we needed but also we do a lot of walk-in services during the summer one of the great things about this summer is that we're going to have esy in two locations being durfee and henry court which will be more age-appropriate for our students but also give them more access to get those walk-in services

to address those compensatory plans over the summer but we still have some positions open and i'm not saying that you know oh it's the district's fault that we have positions open i mean we're seeing shortages all over the state all over the country really um but then how how are we really going to compensate students for a full year's work yep so one of the things we're thinking about

also for next year um is offering some small group after-school services and almost like a drop-in for students but they can be access that additional support as necessary and then really it's going to be on us to track the time that they're receiving for it a lot of our students it comes over different settings so necessarily competitory hours how they work it's not always you know right minute for minute exchange

um so but we want to make sure that you know one our plans that we propose are appropriate they're going to meet students needs and hopefully you know address any gaps that they may have experienced due to this and just really keep you know students best interests at hand all of those plans just kind of stick out to me because the onus really becomes on the student and the family

to then get the student there you know for those compensatory services they're staying after school their routines are disrupted so i'm thinking of students with you know different special education needs you know that it can be a really big disruption i'm not saying i have an answer for you but it just feels like the illness is on the students and the families to get them yeah i definitely hear that um

you know i think in past we've tried to be as flexible as possible trying to do as much during the school day as possible i think you know we just hit the point where folks only have a certain amount of hours in the day but we want to be as flexible and we're certainly open to feedback definitely trying to work with families always to meet the need and i think you know we look to think

outside the box because if you don't especially in special education right i think we've got to be just creative and how we're going to do that because it can't always fall in the family and then you know you think about it's not the family's fault that we couldn't fill a speech language pathology position or you know an ot position or a special ed teacher but it's still their kid that's now in the

classroom that may be really struggling as a result you know i know that if my son had missed out on x amount of speech days you know for a kid with a neurological speech disorder that's going to make a huge difference certainly right and there's going to be likely a lot of regression there so when i think about that it also would have been a huge huge hassle for me to then schlep three

kids to do walk-in services we definitely hear that one piece that like especially looking at this school year when we look at like our home and hospital two students at the practice we hope to kind of keep consistent as they request it we've also been looking to keep it flexible if students want in-home or in the community tutoring pieces but they've also if they've requested virtually we've honored that request as

well to keep that flexibility piece because we've seen a lot of our students when it's a one-to-one model have responded very well in that aspect so like you know we want to place any limits or any barriers in place on this so we'll keep that you know flexibility piece in mind especially if a family was advocating to go in that format since i just think of it you know i'm a parent

with lots of privilege lots of resources and so that's me that's not every other special ed family in the district right i'm sure there are many families in my position there are many families that are not and so just what does that look like you know to compensate for these kids certainly so it's on we got to be creative about how we're going to do it completely agree that's it for now

so on that on that issue so if we identify kids that need let's say speech services at a given school we have five kids at a given school why can't we have them stay after school with a different speech person paid that person and then we drive them home via career so we have the the driving home piece i don't know if we've necessarily explored that but if we have uh you know the

resource and access to it certainly i think that's you know as you're chipping away at it you know there's some that might not be able to do it but if there's some during it you have we have vehicles we have permission to drive we have if we have to pay somebody an hour overtime or whatever i just think if if we planned it you might have less of certain things that we could do

but i i do think we need to utilize some out of the box uh thinking when you when you look at a student that got this letter what do their iep show for progress is does it just indicate that they got no service so right now we do we do basically what we call a can statement it just says basically there was no service provider in place during this time services are being tracked and a

compensatory admin will be issued later on so if they had a goal though what happens to the is anybody measuring their goal to see if they regressed over the time of so their classroom teacher of course on the academic pieces yes but when it's a direct service provider that is is almost virtually impossible because that is that person's specialty especially if it's like speech or ot

that is an area where you know we look towards the compensatory services uh and also one of the things we do which i know not all districts do is we do look to issue progress statements when those uh pieces are going on just because i think it's relevant and we should uh and we're also making up that time and services so we need to report to parents on how students are doing and what that looks like

that makes sense did you have another question i do it's not important it's just on the referral by parent and other non-uh school individuals that after the parents get the the notice you know the five day um and then it's a whole 30 days until they eval correct no no no no they have 30 days to complete the evaluation piece okay so they have to do it no no

so like to say um okay johnny gets a special ed referral they send the consent out to the parent they sign it they send it back the day we receive it starts the 30-day time period okay for all of our assessors to complete their assessments and then they have about another approximately two weeks after that to develop a report that they're going to present at that meeting to then determine eligibility i was a little

confused on that okay thank you i understand better one last question it's about and i meant to ask this with a referral so if i have a student let's say at a middle school that is on an iep and is going to get referred from the school to rpa what is the process on how that would go so for all special ed students at this point we have a meeting to look at

services as well as setting main portion of that is setting we really have to talk about peer group and resources available to that student are they going to be comparable at rpa or are they going to be different and do we need to make any changes within the iep and represent the iep to the parent at that point those meetings so far this year i will say have been going pretty smoothly with our parents

we've had good collaboration especially on the special ed side between the schools and really making sure those are happening and just the communication from parents about what services look like at their school versus rpa it says a meeting with a parent not a an official ip no it's an official iep so any student that gets referred from a regular middle school on an iep has to have a

okay full reconvene of their iep team before they get transferred yes and that happens with 100 fidelity uh that that is our ultimate goal yeah that's what we're always trying to do for everybody it didn't happen now it's happening it didn't happen for our guidance our guidance changed at the beginning of the school year okay and really that was based upon the setting piece that we have students going to a

comparable setting when they're transferred under the district process yeah i i reviewed what we had in the last we were given like what is the steps and i wasn't sure that it was being followed what was in writing and if it would change maybe you could send us something but my concern is that we have students that are they have an iep but they also do something that is not so good and

they're gonna they shouldn't be in the regular middle school just be honest and how does that happen like you know how quickly can that happen and is there things that can just say no i'm gonna you know if i'm a parent i just say i'm not agreeing to the meeting and we don't have it and we have it three times and then we you know as the course goes on

you know i might be a student that doesn't belong in a regular school i'm i'm harassing her i'm terrorizing her and i'm in the school and we can't do any are our hands totally tied no because there's a lot there's a lot of times when we have students especially if they're inclusion based they're usually are no changes to the iep because rpa provides comparable services uh where it might be different if we

ever had let's say um let's say we had a student in a community-based setting and you know the behavior of the program they thought was just going to be make an appropriate referral to rpa then we would have to have a you know a pretty significant discussion over what do they receive at their current school versus what they receive at rpa but typically a lot of these meetings there are no changes to the iep made

we're really just making sure we're documenting the process and making sure we had the team needing to review it and then moving on in the process we've got a couple students who you know be going through this piece and we may not necessarily have at that time but as long as we follow those pieces in the step then they're issued a reassignment letter and they're over in rpa and if you're so if you're in inclusion

you still have to have the meeting yep so every student on an iep has to have a meeting yeah before they get referred and that's in the new guidance yeah thank you that was our revised guidance from michael just this year thank you any other questions just clarification on our pa um it's typically we have some self-contained classrooms but they're not all self-contained classrooms they're not

all considered something over there right now yeah okay there are very few self-contained there we'll have a totally want to make sure there's two now and there'll be three for next year okay that was all i just wanted to better understand okay we're going to move on thank you 3.07 uh proportionate share funding special ed title one if we get uh i think we received some extensive paperwork on this maybe we can

just open it up with questions in the ads of time does anyone have any questions or do you want a quick presentation um give me a quick tip yeah quick run down to sure not to go through the whole document but thank you so uh currently proportionate share funds come from the idea grant uh what it is is based off of this student count of amount of students on ieps who attend

fall river private schools we take that count uh every year and then it goes to the formula for the grant and there's a certain amount of funds we dedicate to the catholic and private schools we meet with them on how to spend the funds those funds are our funds but we're obligated to spend them towards certain services or professional development or those students directly i'll say this we've had a very

collaborative relationship with our private school leaders and we've also really tried to engage our homeschool folks into the process a lot of them have already been in the district they don't always engage in this piece but you try to really outreach them and get them involved a lot of those folks do a lot of walk-in services already at our schools but we collaborate with those schools on

kind of what these services can look like what is meeting their needs what is not typically over the past prior to my time here but we've continued on with it we've provided speech services at those schools right now we have six schools which receive about a full-time position worth of services at those schools on a weekly basis also this year as well as sometimes when there may be leftover funds from here

it's not typically a large amount of funds but we may roll those into an opportunity for professional development for those schools to really increase the skill sets of teachers in those environments we've done a professional development contract with seal to go into those schools and really behind some high level professional development to those teachers so they can better meet students needs

as along with the american recovery grant the planning grant that came through this year as well there was funds that went through proportionate share where we asked schools to develop plans to really for additional services of what they want to see and to address student needs the reason we're in that direction was more looking forward to being academic-based especially with covid especially with

students at points you know not either being in school or attending full-time we knew that you know our students in the private schools were experiencing just as many gaps as our students in the public schools i wanted to provide that opportunity and this is additional funding to go in that direction you know we have about three meetings a year with those schools directly that we

do one really more open meeting for the public to come in to really talk about needs talk about services talk about the actual allocation amount and how that works um and so far you know over the past few years here with the changes in the administration in our private schools we've maintained really good collaborative relationships uh we consider ourselves to kind of be a resource to each other throughout the time

any questions um which schools are currently receiving title one funds i have the five catholic schools and then i'm missing one the catholic schools for well it goes by where student lives right so here you have do you have doctor ryan's that has that breaks it down so all the pre-k to eight schools receive title one funds yeah so i only can think of five of them yeah because the high school doesn't get it it's

right six private schools in florida participate in the title one program oh so support a song yes yes holy trinity it could be a check that helps that's true yeah

um what about the nine it said nine private schools in the city receive titled two-way funds yep for pd so that would be the catholic schools and then you have the other private schools though mastery i don't i i i'll get a list for it yeah okay so all right so all of them receive that for pd yep that's strictly for pd the title 2a okay um okay so the thing i'm trying to

understand so far public schools maintains control of those funds and it does not pay the schools directly okay so one point during the year we don't go over to a school school a and say here's a check for sixty thousand dollars and here's your thing no it's our folks going into the schools with our contractors that go in there uh even if they have like a professional development contract it

goes through our business office and we pay them directly so they never actually see those funds we just collaborate on how they'll be spent um special items right their districts the title one is they change control of the money title yes same thing same thing for title one so i'm asking that question because in the last year and a half two years probably longer than that i've had lots

of families ask questions about what their child and i have asked you a few of them students that i've worked with um ask questions about what their child is entitled to in the private school setting where their student might have an iep and services are agreed upon at a meeting and then nothing ever happens but what what the schools have some of them have advertised is that they have received x amount of dollars

upwards of 60 and 70 thousand dollars from fall river public schools to provide to be able to hire this person this person and this person and that's the way that it's getting it's allocated to them but but this is like where the discrepancy is coming from but like to hire their own staff right yeah that's like that that's the 47 47 500 is the is for title one is the average

um allegation so that's why i'm asking those questions right because people have asked these questions before and there hasn't been any clearer answer that'd be really interesting to see an example of that i will show you i would love to because i think that's something we need to address with them because that and it's more than it's not actual if it was just one school then honestly i wouldn't really bring that up

because it would be like oh well that's not accurate i don't know what they're talking about but that's not the case but it's been more than one yeah one thing if they were saying like this is a collaborative relationship with the district send people in to service your child but yeah it's we've got we received 60 in one case it was 61 000 and this is how we're able from forward public schools

and this is how we're able to hire this staff and the staff to provide these services for your child's iep so then i get concerned right number one as a parent number two as a member of the school committee you know number three is a community member i look at that and say well we're receiving money but yet not receiving the services and i'm not saying that none of the schools are providing services there's

some great special ed work happening in some of the schools but this is the message that's out there and then kids come in and their needs are not met yeah and that's well i mean it's it's inappropriate on multiple levels but right if you could send me those it'd be great i'll follow up with vincent and it happened after there was a shift i think we had talked briefly about how

there used to be um a collaborative meeting that included parents and it was monthly and so parents from each private school that was receiving funding could go to this meeting and talk about their experiences and you know what was working what wasn't working um i think it was lisa muy that was here okay um and she was facilitating a lot of those and it was it was incredibly helpful because it

just kept things very transparent and i fear that that's not what's happening right now yeah i mean we've just followed the requirements from the question from the state we actually we do a written affirmation after all those meetings that we put together they sign off on just to make sure that everybody's aligned and collaborating on what proposed so that is unfortunate that they're

putting that but i'm asking the question publicly and and openly because you know we maintain control of those funds and so you know i think it's important that people know where their money is all day long and how services are provided right like we can do that that's up to each individual school but you know to know how it's actually being distributed is really important and what kids are

i had a question on this this sheet about what districts keep and document service plans and i think is this related to an iep or is this just for this service so service plans we do for students who may live outside of fall river but they attend one of the fall river private schools so if we have a student let's say they live in swansea but they they attract they send a

spiritual school they come in and they have speech and language services we're still obligated through our funds to provide them services because they're taken into the child count so we developed a service plan outside of the iep that says you know we'll be delivering speech services at this frequency at espirito santo so if a student's on an iep yep and they attend spirit santa just because you

mentioned that school are your people running the iep meetings even though those services are being put into place because they're at the sparta center if they live in fall river yes we're responsible for maintaining the iep holding meetings reevaluating them if they do not live in fall river all we're responsible is for the service plan piece and that's a very short meeting where we

kind of review their iep talk to the parent about the service delivery and then create you know just that very short summary service and when you say we do we're responsible for the iep it's based on fall river schools not yes sort of center i found that out the other day that it was very it bothered my mind on why we would spend our staffs time and other folks so

what we're talking about is we have a student let's say that is on an iep at one of those schools when they came to fall river schools they had a pretty extensive iep so when you go to the other school they do a service plan implement a service plan but they don't have to implement the iep so i'm like what like what is going on here and then we waited we spent an hour

or more of our time going over a plan for student a that is never going to be implemented because they don't even have the services or the staff to do it but we maintain a document that's never going to be put into use so some students i guess yeah and part of this transparency there's that there's also a piece if they ever came to register and attend photo republican school we have a plan

ready and waiting for them that would meet that you know we would hopefully meet their needs the other pieces too is that for all the students living in fall river we're still responsible for providing them faith so that means that they're eligible to do walk-in services as well so we could we could technically have students getting let's say full speech and language services because they

attend the catholic school then they're able to go get walk-ins as well or academic services during the school day you have some students who are from or let's say catholic schools who get walk-in ot school so it's that dual piece uh we have the proportion share funds that go out for services at those schools but then we also they're eligible for some services at our frps schools

thank you it doesn't make sense but it's the law we gotta do it we're gonna do it uh anything else on that any new business no i don't entertain a motion through the ground so maybe seconded let's try again yes so miss larry yes that's robert thank you all very much have a great night