Minutes – November 2, 2017 – Re-Organizational Meeting

BERKSHIRE HILLS REGIONAL SCHOOL DISTRICT

Great Barrington                   Stockbridge                 West Stockbridge

SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING

Regular Meeting

Du Bois Regional Middle School – Library

November 2, 2017 – 6:30 p.m.

Present:

School Committee:                S.Bannon, J. St. Peter, D. Singer, B. Fields, R. Dohoney, D. Weston, A. Potter,

1. Piasecki, S. Stephen

Administration:                      Peter Dillon, Sharon Harrison

Staff/Public:                            B. Doren, M. Berle, A. Rex, K. Burdsall, K. Farina

Absent:                                    A. Hutchinson

List of Documents Distributed:

Minutes of School Committee Meeting for October 5, 2017
Minutes of School Committee Meet and Confer for October 19, 2017
FY17 Q4 Overview
FY17 Q4 Transfers
FY18 Q1 Transfer Overview
Monument Next Steps
Multicultural Bridge Pledge Request
Not in Our County – Multicultural Bridge
November 2, 2017 – Personnel Report
Policy GBEC Revision 2017
November 2, 2017 – Subcommittee Chart

RECORDER NOTE:  Meeting attended by recorder and minutes transcribed during the meeting and after the fact from live recording provided by CTSB.  Length of meeting:    2 hr. 15 minutes.

CALL TO ORDER

Chairman Steve Bannon called the meeting to order immediately at 7pm.

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

The listing of agenda items are those reasonably anticipated by the chair, which may be discussed at the meeting. Not all items listed may in fact be discussed, and other items not listed may be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by law. This meeting is being recorded by CTSB, Committee Recorder, members of the public with prior Chair permission and will be broadcast at a later date. Minutes will be transcribed and made public, as well as added to our website, www.bhrsd.org once approved.

MOTION to enter into Executive Session pursuant to MGL c30A, Section 21 (a)(3) to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining.   J. St. Peter                     Seconded:  B. Fields – Roll Call Vote; all in favor.

1. Bannon – I would like to take a moment of silence for former superintendent, principal and teacher, Linda Day, who passed away yesterday. Thank you.

Reorganization of School Committee:  P. Dillon – once a year we get to reorganize and for five seconds I get to hold the gavel.

• Election of Officers
  • Nomination for Chair: MOTION to nominate Steve Bannon as Chair:      Potter     Seconded:  B. Fields       Accepted:  Unanimous
  • Nomination for Vice Chair: Dohoney – is the vice chair elected or appointed by the chair?  S. Bannon – we have always elected.  R. Dohoney – is that what our rules prescribe?  S. Bannon – I believe so.  D. Weston – I think because there are a couple of issues that are on the future agenda that I have a conflict of interest with, I think somebody else might be better served to have that position.  MOTION to nominate Andy Potter for Vice Chair:  D. Weston            Seconded:  R. Dohoney         Accepted:  Unanimous
  • Nomination for Assistant Treasurer (currently Dan Weston): MOTION to nominate Dan Weston as Assistant Treasurer:  Dohoney          Seconded:  B. Fields           Accepted:  Unanimous
  • Nomination for Secretary (currently Andy Potter): MOTION to nominate Jason St. Peter as Secretary:  Dohoney             Seconded:  A. Potter            Accepted:  Unanimous
  • Nomination for Recorder (currently Christine Kelly): MOTION to appoint Christine Kelly as School Committee Recorder:  Dohoney             Seconded:  B. Fields             Accepted:  Unanimous
• Appointment of School Committee Representatives to Other Committees:
  • Negotiating Subcommittee: (Currently Steve Bannon, Dan Weston and Ann Hutchinson)  Ann is at the MASC convention.  She did not say that she wanted to be off of anything so I am going to leave her on everything she is on now.  That would only be fair.  Steve, Dan and Ann will remain on Negotiating Committee.
  • Policy Subcommittee: (Currently Steve, Andy and Sean). All three will remain.
  • Warrant Subcommittee: We are meeting 15 minutes before our Finance Subcommittee meeting and the reason for that is the law has changed and it has to be done in an open session.  (Currently, Dan Weston, Jason St. Peter, Rich Dohoney and Andy Potter is alternate).  See below.
  • Finance Subcommittee: (Currently, Rich Dohoney is Chair, Steve Bannon, Dan Weston, Andy Potter and Bill Fields).  All five will remain and will also be appointed Warrant Subcommittee.
  • Buildings & Grounds Subcommittee: (Currently, Jason St. Peter is Chair, Bill Fields, Kristen Piasecki and Diane Singer).  All four will remain.
  • Superintendent’s Evaluation and Advisory Subcommittee: (Currently Dan Weston, Andy Potter and Anne Hutchinson).  Dan Weston – I have been on it a long time.  I wouldn’t mind taking a step down.  Bannon – Dan, here is one reason I would like to see you stay one more year.  We need to transition Duey into Chair.  D. Weston – ok, I’ll stay.  S. Bannon – you will be the chair for our group but not for the shared group.
  • Technology Subcommittee: (Currently Andy Potter, Steve Bannon).  Sean Stephen will join and Rich Dohoney as well.  Andy will be Chair.
  • District Regional Agreement and Amendment Committee is no more
  • District Consolidation and Sharing SubCommittee: (Currently Steve Bannon, Rich Dohoney, Anne Hutchinson, Sean Stephen).  All four will remain and Kristen Piasecki will be added.
  • School Center, Inc.: Meets four times a year, maybe five this time at 3:30pm.  Diane Singer, Jason St. Peter and Steve Bannon will remain.
  • Fund for Excellence: Bill Fields, Diane Singer will remain.
  • Vocational Advisory Board: We need to get this program up and running.  The chair of the school committee is the chair of that committee.  Andy Potter, Sean Stephen, Kristen Piasecki will remain.
  • MASC Representative: Andy Potter, Bill Fields will remain.  Bannon – I want to see at least three people go to the convention next year.  It is a worthwhile endeavor.

MINUTES:

BHRSD School Committee Minutes of Meeting dated October 5, 2017
BHRSD SChool Committee Minutes of Meet and Confer dated October 19, 2017

MOTION TO APPROVE MINUTES OF BOTH SETS OF MINUTES:   R. Dohoney                Seconded:  B. Fields                  Approved:  Unanimous;  A. Potter will abstain on the October 5th minutes.

TREASURER’S REPORT:

SUPERINTENDENT’S REPORT:

• Good News Item(s): See below
• Dillon – just a couple of things at the district or county level, election is a big day for professional development and almost all of the districts in the county are working together. There is something like 140 different offerings countywide; things are museums, galleries, schools.  That should be a great opportunity for people to get together.  It is not just a one and done professional development but what happens out of this, outgoing groups form and meet on a regular basis and do stuff on a timeline.  At the end of it, we will do a survey and be able to share the feedback.
• Pledge Request – Multicultural Bridge: I sent in the packet and I will send it around, there is a group called Not in Our County and they have been asking folks around the county, elected officials, to sign a pledge.  The pledge is very much aligned with our work and what passed in Great Barrington at last year’s town meeting, a commitment to working together with my neighbors to create safer, more integrated communities for all residents in Berkshire County.  I do not stay silent in the face of intolerance or hate based on race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity, country of origin, ability or any other factor.  I work to acknowledge to and heal all forms of hate, bigotry and bullying.  I pledge to renew my commitment to this work everyday.  If you are interested in signing it, please do so.  Representative Pignatelli, State Senator Hines, and many others have already signed.  I think it is a neat thing and worth doing.  If you do it, you can leave it with me and I will get it to them or your can mail it yourself.  Part of the power of this is a grassroots effort and leveraging it on social media to take a picture of yourself and put in a hash tag #allhandsin and get all of your friends to see it, then they will do, etc.  All of a sudden hundreds of thousands people in Berkshire County will sign it.
  • Ari Cameron. I am a community member and work with Multicultural Bridge.  It is a county-wide effort to stop hate and bullying and create safe and inclusive communities for all.  This is an effort led by Multicultural Bridge but it is a coalition of many organizations working together to make this happen.  Lily Schwartz; Great Barrington resident – it is a natural movement across the county to build the kind of communities that we want to live in.  Karen Clark; Not in Our County Steering Committee and I feel like this is the next step.  We have asked our select people and police officers to step up and say that they would be supportive so all can feel safe in our community.  Over 300 people so far have signed.   Kristen Piasecki – I am going to sign up right away and thank you for doing this.  Have the high school students been asked to sign this? Ari Cameron – we can certainly get all of the information to them.
• Richmond Request – Task Force: Dillon – The Richmond School Committee would like to approach this school committee about the possibility of me occasionally representing them in the context of the Berkshire County Task Force.  We have a meeting coming up in the context of Shaker Mountain School Union.  I think rather than doing this back and forth, we will just do it together at the next meeting.
• Proposed Long-Term Substitute Pilot – P. Dillon – at the high school, we have a couple vacancies in science that we need to fill. I am going to use existing language in the contract about long-term subs to hire staff within the building to meet that need.
• MMRHS Next Steps – P. Dillon – you have a little memo that I rewrote when I wrote to you about the RAC.  Maybe the group can come up with a good name for itself, but the high school next step committee…here is my proposal to fill that committee:  I recommend that we have 19 members that would include 9 citizens, 3 each from Great Barrington, Stockbridge, West Stockbridge, 6 selectboard and finance committee representatives so two from each of the towns, 4 school committee representatives (1 from Stockbridge and 1 from West Stockbridge and 2 from Great Barrington).  That was an approach that we used in the RAC which tried to balance out the distribution of kids and population across the towns.  On the group, you would get additional support from me, from the business administrator, from the director of operations, from the principals, and others including consultants and needed .  The voting members of this group would be the 19 members and the people would be providing supplementary support.    I think we had a really high level success in the context of the RAC so I think this number is manageable.  It is a little bigger than others but I think the side gives us the potential for the diversity opinion and wide representation.  I think including selectboard and finance board members gives those folks an opportunity to talk and get feedback from the boards they serve on and to be ambassadors back to those boards.  I think the three citizens from each town gives us some good community input.  Mooney – who will appoint the 9 citizens?  P. Dillon – in the context of the RAC, what happened was we had a posting, people applied and then Steve and I decided.  S. Bannon – I want to make sure we have this correct and not have to come back and do it again.  I think it is a legitimate question.  I think what we did was Peter and I formed the citizen members then we brought it to the school committee for their endorsement.  Just to be clear, this committee is an advisory committee and it has to meet all requirements of the open meeting law.  P. Dillon – the other thing that I didn’t include in this but I would recommend having is, because it worked out well in the RAC; there were tri-captains in the RAC team that were chosen by members of the RAC.  Each of those people represented each of the three towns.  S. Bannon – that may or may not work out but it did work out in the RAC.  How do people feel about the composition of the committee?  D. Weston – it was very successful at the RAC.  I think there were challenging discussions but it was the right size and right makeup.  R. Dohoney – in doing an MSBA funded program, they have their own committee and I know Peter took this proposal and tried to marry it with that.  That committee if we ever get to that point, it is simply not community members, at least one has to be knowledgeable in the educational function and facility and one has to be a community member with architecture, engineering and construction experience.  I don’t know if we have to make that a mandate but maybe we should.  I would like to make that a mandate of this.  S. Stephen – I think if this is going to happen, there is no reason to go through this whole process with 20 people getting together for a year and not have it work parallel with anything else that we need to do.  Certain things that we are going to have to be doing with the MSBA so if we can work it so this is all going parallel, we don’t have to repeat anything, that is what we need to do.  S. Bannon – I would like to see as many members of this committee if it works out to continue on if we have some sort of a building committee.  I think Rich is absolutely right plus it only makes sense to have people involved in this that have architectural or engineering backgrounds.  B. Fields – my problem with that, and I can see where Rich is coming from, is that limits the input that the community really needs or we need from the community.  From the past discussion at the last meeting, it is possible there could be a consultant.  The RAC had two state consultants that helped us through some of the technical stuff that we weren’t familiar with in regard to how aid was distributed, etc.  I am wondering if at this initial point, if we should just see what we get instead of saying, we need someone with this particular expertise.  If we are finding from the general citizens who want to be on this that this is not the case, then I think we have a precedent already.  P. Dillon – we could go to 20 if you wanted.  The other thing on the MSBA, the support staff, Sharon, Steve and myself and Amy, meet those requirements.  The only other one that maybe is useful to consider and we didn’t have this in the context of the RAC, is the possibility of one or more teacher representatives.  While it is often hard to get, particular if they are night meetings, the possibility of some student involvement.  If we went with students, I would recommend that we do 9th through 10th graders because we don’t want to work with a senior because they graduate and go to college mid process.

MOTION to add an additional 20th member to meet the building background that was described on the document and also add a teacher representative and a student representative:  D. Weston              Seconded:  B. Fields         Opposed:  S. Stephen               Accepted:  Majority

1. Bannon – we now have the configuration and what we did with RAC is we will get letters out to the town manager or administrative assistant in each town requesting that we get a member from the selectboard, a member from the finance committee. We will also advertise for these positions to submit a letter of request to Peter and then we will come back to you with our suggestions of these 22 members. P. Dillon – there will be three from each town, plus a selectboard person and a finance committee person plus a school committee person.  Who knows, maybe the lucky student rep will be from West Stockbridge as well.  R. Dohoney – should we say four school committee representatives or four members of the building and grounds subcommittee?  S. Stephen – if it is going to happen, then those are the guys who should be on it.  S. Bannon – do they meet the requirements of Stockbridge, West Stockbridge and the two from Great Barrington?  It’s Bill, Ann, Kristin and Jason.  P. Dillon – the only other thing and I’m not in the capacity of that group, does it make sense for the school committee people to have cross-organization experience.  Would it be beneficial if one of the four were on the finance committee and they were keeping an eye on the financial ball if one of them was on some other committee?  S. Bannon – I think that makes sense.  The other thing to keep in mind, and I’m not against this, is that these meeting are all open to the public.  I was not on the RAC committee and I think I missed one meeting.  Andy was at most of them too.  Whether we do this or not, I would think the buildings and grounds subcommittee would have a vesting interest to show up at as many meetings as they could.  R. Dohoney – we don’t have to decide that now.  I was just throwing that out there as a suggestion.  B. Fields – you do have a crossover because I am on the finance committee too.  P. Dillon – I wrote this draft charge to be a focus but open ended but mostly as strawman so folks could look at it and pick it apart and make it better.  For our television-viewing audience, I’ll read it and I’ll do it slowly.

Draft Charge

The Monument Next Steps Committee is an appointed advisory committee to the BHRSD school committee.  The charge of the advisory committee is to gather information to support the school committee in making decisions about how to proceed with addressing the physical plant needs of the high school.  The group will research possibilities within and without the MSBA process and share their analysis of those options with the school committee.  While the group will set its own timeline, the hope is the work can be completed within the year.

1. Bannon – School committee comments? R. Dohoney – I don’t like the name but other than that it is good. B. Fields – I have a name.  The MM Committee.  The Modernization of Monument.  A. Potter – that’s actually the MOM Committee.  B. Fields – we have to get away from renovate.  That has bad vibes and has a history behind it.  Let’s use the word modernization.  S. Bannon – I’m looking at this and don’t see the work renovate anywhere.  B. Fields – in other discussions it has come up.  I like the word modernization.  P. Dillon – one possibility could be that it would be better to have a name when we advertise it but if we wanted the group itself to name itself it could do that too.  S. Stephen – what is the committee going to be doing  in the meantime?  S. Bannon – this committee?  I’m sure we could find stuff to keep ourselves busy.  R. Dohoney – we need to vote on a capital budget in March.  S. Bannon – we are going to be active participants in this.  It won’t be the committee as a whole; second of all, I think we will continue to monitor and in the budget there will be things to modernize Monument as needed for safety and educational reasons.  I don’t think we are just going to stop what we are doing.  I think a year is a reasonable time.  It seems like forever but they will probably meet once a month like the RAC committee did and then in between as subcommittees, etc.  I think it is going to take that long for them to …  A. Potter – I think that we shouldn’t have any expectation that it will be any less than a year.  S. Bannon- I think a year is aggressive.  D. Weston – Should the school committee be doing a statement of interest?  S. Bannon – we already said at the last meeting that as a placeholder, we would do a statement of interest.  We already had that out there.  R. Dohoney – I checked today and they haven’t posted.  It is usually the end of January to beginning of April.  S. Stephen – if they don’t complete it within our timeline or the state’s timeline more importantly we get thrown back behind everybody else.  S. Bannon – to be clear, the statement of interest can be withdrawn so if this committee and the school committee agrees that we are not going to go with the MSBA process, we are not locking ourselves in; we are just putting ourselves in as a placeholder.  I think it is understood from the last meeting that we are going to put in an SOI.  B. Fields – we haven’t had a vote on that yet.  S. Bannon – that’s true.  I would welcome a vote right now to do that because we only have a few meetings coming up between now and when their deadline is and we don’t know when that is.  P. Dillon – the vote could be to direct Steve, Sharon and me to write the SOI and then we could come back…R. Dohoney – it requires a vote.  P. Dillon – right, then we could come back with the draft of it and you could vote to submit it or rewrite the draft.  S. Bannon – as opposed to waiting for them to come out especially with the holidays.  R. Dohoney – if the MSBA posts that they are accepting SOIs and you guys don’t have an SOI on the table at the next school committee, you know….it’s a no brainer.  P. Dillon – you can just tell me or I can just say….R. Dohoney – Bill’s right.  There needs to be a vote on it.  K. Piasecki – that’s a detailed thing?  S. Bannon – no, the SOI is a general statement about the condition of the school and the district.  R. Dohoney – if we get accepted on the SOI then you have to put the other package together.  K.  Piasecki – my concern is they have tweaked the SOI each time for new ones so trying to do it in advance of what the SOI requirements are…S. Bannon – we aren’t asking you to do that.  We are saying when it comes out that we expect you to be ready to have it brought to us as soon as possible.  R. Dohoney – for review and approval or disapproval.  S. Bannon – do I have a motion?

MOTION to start the SOI process:  S. Stephen                    Seconded:  K.  Piasecki             Opposed:  B. Fields Accepted:  Majority

1. Bannon – does anybody have any comments or changes to the Draft Charge? R. Dohoney – do we need to vote on that tonight or when we appoint the committee? S. Bannon – I would like to recruit the committee and use it as part of the advertising.  I don’t want anyone to join the committee that doesn’t know what the committee is doing.

MOTION to approve with the amendment that it be called The Modernize Monument Committee:  R. Dohoney

1. Dillon – I’m not opposed to Modernize Monument but does modernizing preclude a full range of options? B. Fields – no it includes everything that modernization would bring the building up to the 21st Century. S. Bannon – that precludes the option of a new building and we said we weren’t going to preclude that option.  B. Fields – modernize in anyway needed.  Rich is the lawyer.  R. Dohoney – I don’t think it precludes anything.  S. Bannon – unfortunately your definition precluded it but I don’t think you meant to.  B. Fields – no I did not.  K.  Piasecki – I like Next Steps Committee; it doesn’t sound threatening.  R. Dohoney – I can withdraw my amendment.  D. Weston – I kind of like Next Steps too.  S. Bannon – can we just formally make a motion that we call it Next Steps.

MOTION to approve the Draft Charge as presented by the administration:  R. Dohoney           Seconded:   A. Potter               Opposed:  S. Stephen        Approved:  Majority

1. Dohoney – I agree that the name can be changed by the committee if they want. S. Bannon – Sean do you want to say why you are opposed? S. Stephen – I think the work has been done before and it’s a lot of work that is going to be repeating itself.  A. Potter – so you are opposed to the whole concept?  S. Stephen – yes.  R. Dohoney – but not opposed to doing something about the high school?  S. Stephen – no.  S. Bannon – I respect that.

• Updates:
  • MCAS Update: Dillon – This is to be a collaborative effort, we are going to talk a little bit about testing and assessment, Bill’s favorite topic.  Kristie and I will start with a brief overview and then we will have Mary talk about Muddy Brook; Kristie will talk about Monument Valley in Ben’s absence and Amy will talk about her inherited data from the high school.  As we are talking about it we are happy to stop and respond to questions at any point.  We are talking from a paper document we put together.  If you didn’t get one, there is a pile in the back of the room if you want one and this will be available on our website tomorrow.  K. Farina – I apologize that I didn’t get this packet copied and you didn’t get a chance to look it over prior to the meeting but I am going to talk through some of what I included in here and then we will address things building by building.  First and foremost, I wanted to make sure that we are all aware of the shifts in the testing that has been happening in the district over the past several years.  In 2014, Berkshire Hills decided to adopt the PARCC exam so the FY15 and FY16 for grade 3-8 the assessments we were giving were PARCC and then last year we switched to the next generation MCAS or MCAS 2.0.  Last year we also gave computer-based testing to the 8th graders and this year we will be doing computer-based testing in 4th, 5, 7th and 8th grades which is a requirement of the state so that in 2019 we will be doing computerized testing for all grades.  The next thing that I have included in here is the accountability reporting, which is based on participation rates.  I have included charts for the district participation rates and this is for 3-8 participation and then I included the chart for Muddy Brook and for Monument Valley.  The accountability level reading are based on participation rates so this year the district level we had our subgroup rates of latinos only participating at 81% for ELA and 83 for mathematics.  Under 90% is what puts us at a level 3 rating.  Muddy Brook did not have any rates that were below 90 so that Muddy Brook received a no level rating and Monument Valley is also a level 3 rating because of the 89% participation rate in 8th science in the subgroup of economically disadvantaged.  P. Dillon – what that comes down to is Muddy Brook and Monument Valley each one kid.  K. Farina – we are encouraging families to allow their students to participate for several reasons.  First and foremost, higher participation will allow up to do better analysis particularly in these smaller subgroups as they are small in the district so when we are trying to analyse it is important for us to have enough information to analyse it statistically.  The other is that these ratings do actually impact choices people make about where to buy homes and where to send their children to school, school choice, etc.  In a period of declining enrollment, our level ratings matter.  P. Dillon – you may be wondering why where aren’t talking about participation for the high school; the three MCAS tests for the high school are a graduation requirement so everybody participates otherwise they don’t graduate.  Very few people are opting out at the high school level because if you do, you don’t graduate.  K. Farina – also at the high school level they are not taking the MCAS 2.0; the high school is taking the original version of the MCAS transitioning to and the state has been doing that by changing some of the questions as we move to 2019 when we will be at the next generation MCAS for science, math and ELL.  J. St. Peter – for the high school, do they have to pass to graduate or … P. Dillon – they have to pass but there are some particular circumstances that you can pass in different ways.  J. St. Peter – so they don’t just have to take them, they have to pass.  P. Dillon – they take it in 9th and 10th grade and if they don’t pass it then, they can take it again in 11th or 12th grade.  If you are a level three for performance, the state gets a little directive and provides support for better or worse.  If you are a level 3 because of participation, you get the label and that’s all you get.  You don’t get money, you don’t get direction.  K. Farina –  the next two pages in the packet, what I have included is some of the specific data including the charts showing performance at each grade level for reading and math from grades 3-8.  That was the next generation which is why it is a separate chart from the grade 5/8 science and then grade 10 ELL, math and science; that is the older version of the MCAS so the reporting and the scores look a little different.  The reason is because of the different versions of the test.  I also included performance over the past four years and our grade 10 level I did not include that for other grade levels primarily because the with the comparison we went from the previous version of MCAS to PARCC to the new version of MCAS which is a more complicated analysis.  P. Dillon – let’s remind people  that there are two things in the elementary and middle school data.  There is the average scale score and there is SGP which is the student growth percentile.  In the best case scenario the student growth can range from 0-100 and in the best case scenario, it would be in the 40-60 range.  You will see there are some places where it is meeting that, just below it or significantly above it.  K. Farina – that is also what is in the next two charts but not for just Berkshire Hills but for all the schools in the county.  On the page after that we are looking at student growth percentiles.  Those are relative to other students.  When a student growth percentile is calculated their growth is measured against other students who performed similar to them in the same similar grouping in the state.  These are the mean or average for the percentiles.  P. Dillon – There are not growth percentiles for third grade because that is the first time they are taking any formal state assessment so you can’t see how they did from the previous year.  K. Farina – I am going to pause my presentation there and allow Mary to come up and I will be back.  D. Weston – for grade 10 science and tech, what is someone takes Bio MCAS freshman year?  Is that included in that.  K. Farina – yes, it is.  P. Dillon – there was a physical science class that 9th graders used to take as well as the biology class and some would be both but now students are doing just bio.

1. Berle – so you will see from the 3rd and 4th grade scores that we are significantly off from the county and state compared to previous years. There are not celebrations in these scores. I think what might be helpful is to talk about what we have done, what we are doing and what we will do.  I actually brought graphs, if you would prefer to see a graph and tables if that is easier.  There is another conversation from the community perspective about what our orientation to the past and if you asked anybody at Muddy Brook last year, our particular goal was to get people to take the test and we really didn’t focus on, compared to previous years, focus on the actual test taking.  There is something to learn there.  If we go into math, what we have done is start the investigations third edition last year and that is a new program.  This is the first year we will run it beginning to end.  We also worked with Michael Flynn for 10 days.  There is a clear invitation to revamp our internal assessments and make sure that we are emphasizing the areas where we get points on the test that we want to do better.  Kristie and I have already been in conversation about that.  I am very interested in piloting Red Bird which is a personalized learning base from the west coast; you can look it up online.  It is an online math supplement that could support both students and teachers where we need to differentiate more.  In ELA, we have been doing a lot of work using our internal assessments to descent where kids are reading.  We are making really significant goals for high interest books.  We looked at the scores already as a faculty and one of the things that comes out, we knew the cohort was needed in additional support.  They have a group that invited us to develop the therapeutic program; they are the group that helped us understand that we needed to hire another SPED teacher which we did for this year and they are also a group to really look at our Tier 2 supports.  We have made really significant changes to how our Tier 2 so kids who are not on IEPs but who need a little extra support.  Last year and previously we have been pulling out of the class primarily and what we learned is we have a group that needed more support as we are pulling more kids out for services it’s too fragmented so it makes more sense to have our Tier 2 people move into the classroom which started this fall and is about keeping our teachers teaming together, supporting each other and also the kids receive supports close to the curriculum.  If you do an item analysis on the ELA, and I don’t have that, but it is something that we have talked about as a staff, we were behind with these kids as we were building the therapeutic program.  They actually did ok on the straight reading section; they were way off on writing independently so that is an area that we know needs attention.  One of the questions that comes up as we pulled back on homework is about having more writing at home and in class and better support the kids better in writing.  That is one area where we can really make up the difference.  I think it is good to share what we did not do.  I have always gone up and talked with the kids and told them to do your best and I think we have had so many conversations about how we are not sure how we feel about it, I just wanted people to take it but we almost pretended it didn’t exist.  I don’t think that was so great for us.  We did get more people participating but I also think that we need to know that this actually matters.  3rd and 4th are slightly different pictures; the team was slightly different.  We had one person out but their goal last year in 4th grade was science.  All of their work as a team was focused on science.  That may be a factor there.  We knew the third graders had an achievement issue.  We did see internally their growth starting in December of 2nd grade year was very impressive but it didn’t close the gap to get competitive for this test.  I think there are a number of things we need to shift if we want to do well on this.  I am proud of the work that teachers are doing.  They are working really hard.  I am proud of the teaming and I am really open to your questions and committed to work with you and the community.  D. Weston – I have a lot of questions unfortunately.  I think the teachers have done a great job and I am biased because I am a teacher.  I don’t think it has been fair to the teachers because I think they have done what they have been asked to do.  I do not believe we have a solid reading program.  I do not believe that investigations met our students’ needs.  Ten years ago, I sat down with Denise Hardy and looked at MCAS scores and there was a downward trend.  I don’t like to look at MCAS scores as an absolute value.  I don’t believe as this would show that 16% of the 3rd grades can’t read.  I think that is not a fair representation going on.  I do think that relative to other districts, it’s all we have to compare ourselves to.  When I sat down with Denise Hardy many years ago, I went back through all the MCAS data I could and we were the second to highest elementary performing in the county.  Since then we have been doing investigations and now we are quite literally the bottom.  I don’t think that we are doing the right stuff.  I have had three children go through the school and if you ask me, and my wife volunteered in the school for years, what the approach to reading is, I can’t tell you by the work that they have done.  I can’t tell you by the work they brought home.  As an administration, I do not think we have a firm grasp on how early literacy comes together.  I think we need outside help.  I have mentioned to Peter a number of times over the years; specifically, I know of one group that can come in and help; they are the Hill for Literacy in Boston.  We need a full accounting and plan for what we are doing for literacy.  I don’t think that our interventionists are putting in enough time with the students.  I think we are spending way too much time accessing students and not enough time working with students.  My kids would constantly say, Mr. Smith wasn’t there or Mr. Jones wasn’t there; were they sick?  No they were in a meeting.  Teachers are not with kids as often as they should be.  I think there are a lot of factors that have to all be looked at.  I don’t think it is a one year thing.  There were a couple of spikes where third grade has gone up but year after year except for the year before, third grade has been a terrible area.  We are in a lot of trouble with this.  As an educator, I hate meddling school committees.  When I got on the school committee, I vowed to keep my mouth shut and not try to tell people specifically how to run the school.  I think in retrospect that was a mistake because I could see this coming for a long time and I have tried to be behind the scenes pushing for this or that without saying you need to do something specifically.  I think I failed.  I really do.  I think we are in a really bad situation and I don’t think we need to be teaching specifically for the test and as a educator I am not a big fan of the MCAS but it is the only way I can get to be unbiasedly evaluated.  You can compare me to somebody else.  You can compare my district to another, etc.  Just as Kristie said before, we have people looking at our district.  Last year, we were very upset because we were a level 3 district due to participation.  Now our performance – we should be even more concerned because even though we didn’t get a level 3 rating but if you compare us to other schools, we are ranking up there with level 3 and sometimes level 4 schools based on performance.  M. Berle – this was not a good performance.  D. Weston – I am gravely concerned.  I would tackle reading/literacy first then use that model next year to tackle mathematics.  Obviously, they can’t do too much in one year.  The state as a model for looking at literacy but the Hill for Literacy they have been working with Connecticut schools a ton and doing some major turnaround stuff with them.  Darcy Burns is the person to contact there.  I have taken classes with her and she is excellent.  We need that outside help.  It doesn’t have to be them but we need some support and we needed it yesterday.  M. Berle – I hear everything you are saying and I appreciate it.  I don’t think you failed.  I think you worked hard to make a difference.  I agree that we have some really significant problems but the Fundations work that we have taken on this year is databased and is really successful in many places.  We have hired Kristen Burke and she has come a couple of days already.  She is working with us next Tuesday.  Our staff is excited about it.  We could have made a case for it a few years earlier and I can take responsibility by saying that I slowed that decision down because the staff was a bit divided when I started.  As I did my entry planning and listened to folks, we had half of the folks that wanted to support more phonics and then we had other folks that wanted to stick with the course we were on.  It was a pretty charged discussion.  We did get to a place clearly with data last spring where everybody was ready to say yes, we need to address this piece aggressively.  With that, and I am open to looking at what you are addressing and look closer at it, we are using guided reading with Fountas & Pinnell and we purchased significant resources from Pioneer Valley Books.  We are doing some really nice work with leveled readers and support for teachers and teachers are thinking that is really good this year.  Kristen Burke is also working with folks to manage their phonics and guided reading together.  The other thing I would say about ten years ago and now is we had 15% low income when you were looking at those data sheets and we actually kept our school numbers even or improving for a lot of that time and this year we are 48% low income if you account for the folks doing paper applications.  That is a different cohort.  It is not an excuse and I really don’t want to sound defensive on that but this committee has done significant work to support us in building for the kids we have now.  We were not ready for this 3rd grade cohort.  R. Dohoney – well, when you compare that cohort to other similar cohorts in the community, we aren’t doing well either.  M. Berle – I agree with you and I think what is happening at Muddy Brook is that the rapid shift in our population is inviting our staff to learn a new set of skills and they are really working hard at it including the social/emotion work and getting that extra support as well as SPED and building that therapeutic program.  I don’t deny that we have significant work and instruction in core subjects but it is complex and it is nuance.  If you look at the item analysis, and I am happy to sit down with you and go through some of that for anybody who would like to, we could take a deeper dive but there are some places that we can make up points that are around a little focus.  We want to be competitive then we do need to say we care about it enough to give kids support.  We have more than a handful of students that have social/emotional disabilities who are actually some of our strongest academic kids and then some kids who just get anxious on the day.  Unfortunately, in 4th grade we did have a handful, and the cohorts are really different, every year you have kids that do better than some and others that do not was well, that sort of balances.  We had a handful of students in the 4th grade that had 1% growth scores.  They were really smart kids, we just could have done it differently.  B. Fields – but the test itself in 4th grades, one of my complaints about this is that the test itself in many areas was inappropriate for the grade that it was being given at.  It was two and three grades more difficult.  You are asking these 4th grades for many items to read things that were inappropriate for that grade level.  M. Berle – you can say that but the kids in Pittsfield we also reading the same test.  D. Weston – Bill, I completely agree with you and I was actually really good.  When you give the test you aren’t actually supposed to look at it so I really didn’t look at too much of the test.  I really didn’t.  I am waiting for the release of the questions.  I have students that I thought would do really well and they did ok.  I have children reading books this thick in a week, a day and I thought I should have performed higher.  The test is in some ways kind of ridiculous.  We still need to perform better, clearly.  I am looking at the Fountas & Pinnell chart from the notes of one of my meetings and it is not guided reading and it’s not phonics.  I am very nervous as I read in the elementary newsletter, when you say guided reading is our reading program, it is just a piece of a reading program.  We are going to supplement it with Fundations.   M. Berle – it is exactly what Lenox is using.  D. Weston – even Fountas & Pinnell, they are like the guided reading people, and guided reading only happens twice in their circles.  I really don’t think we have a full grasp of early literacy.  I think the administration to get that knowledge.  I think some of our teachers have it and maybe aren’t in the position to share it.  I know there is always disagreement.  If there are three teachers, there are four opinions on what to do.  I have been concerned and I remain concerned and we need that quickly.  S. Bannon – any other questions or comments.
2. Dillon – playing the role of Ben is Kristie. K. Farina – I will give it my best shot. Ben gave me some bullet points and I am going to try to summarize for you for the middle school.  ELA and math at the middle school also did not perform as well as we would like.  There has been an increase in students who are only partially meeting the expectations.  The growth has been very mixed particularly depending on what grade we are looking at.  Some grades had much stronger growth and some not as much.  You can look at either the first chart or the others included.  As you can see, it is up and down from year to year.  There was a stronger performance for girls in the subgroup of students that at had emotional and behavioral issues in these areas.  In science, we have performed below state averages for several years and this past year, we were below in both 5th and 8th grade.  The MCAS results are showing us a need for more content with focus on K-8 science, particularly relative to the new science standards.  The shift in instruction to the next generation science standards has been qualitative work around reading and writing and there needs to be some analysis of how that matches with the actual test that the students take.  In terms of ELA, there are some areas of focus that we have been working on and continue to work on.  They have been working on writing portfolios for performance assessments in each grade 5-8.  We have also been focused on aligning reading and writing across the curriculum in 5th and 6th grade; moving up with high needs students in the upper grades.  Sixth grade has had the longest and most consistent deployment of this practice and the strongest performance year to year.  This should be a model of development throughout the school.   We need to do an analysis of our own writing program with the MCAS prompts for ELA.  In math, they have been focused on the standards of mathematical practice and aligning these skills to build a solid understanding and perseverance in mathematics.   Performance assessments like math projects have been more detailed and have increased depth over the years.  The long view of math instruction has delivered strong performance and growth in 8th grade as we send out students to the high school.  We need to do an analysis of the performance assessments relative to the open response prompts in MCAS 2.0.
3. Dohoney – I have a general question about the middle school and the elementary school. We have to assess. I have the same concerns about what Dan has and our duty as school committee members which we are not really equipped to deal with this problem but at the end of the day, the buck kinds of stops with us.  If outside help is required to help these folks, they can make that case to us but do we need outside help to help us assess this?  Is that the problem at that level?  I have heard the explanation of these programs every time they have been pitched; I understand half of it.  How do we know what is being done is correct?  Do we need an outside consultant or evaluator?  D. Weston – from my perspective as a parent and being on the school committee and my background in education, they do know what they are doing for assessing.  I don’t always know if we apply the information we have as efficiently as we could but they are doing a lot of assessing and maybe too much.  I was attending the meetings that were held two years ago at Gateway for the well-performing school districts.  One of things there were saying from the state was look how much your are assessing then factor into how much instructional time you are losing in your assessing.  Personally, ELA has given up 20% of my teaching for assessing so I immediately changed my practice for that.  That was one of the things the state saw when looking at under-performing districts is don’t get caught in the assessment trap; use quick efficient assessments and don’t get lose you instructional time doing assessments.  R. Dohoney – my concern isn’t assessing our students, it is our school committee assessing our administration to see if what they are doing is correct.  These scores are awful and I don’t know why.  I have no way of knowing.  Is there some kind of outside auditor to come in and look at everything we are doing over the last five years and say this is where you screwed up?  J. St. Peter – I share Dan and Rich’s grave concerns for these scores and I think the school committee as a whole is giving mixed signals as long as I have been on it and before saying the testing doesn’t matter, let’s opt out without consequences, then you get to the point where we are now.  I think us as a committee as a whole needs to hopefully have a consensus if we are happy about this or are we at the point that these test don’t’ matter at all, we are going to teach the way we want to teach or do we want to take steps to improve that?  P. Dillon – I don’t want to get in the distraction of the validity of the tests.  I think it is a distraction.  In all sorts of contexts, many more challenging than this context, I have seen folks do good work and because of that good work and it is not text focuses but because people are focused on teaching and learning, kids also do well on the assessments.  Historically, we have been in a place when we were in the top quarter of the county and we had that flexibility.  It is much better to tweak things or make adjustments when you are coming from a place of strength than when you are coming from a place of weakness or not doing as well as you should.  I think a lot of what Dan is saying we need to revisit.  I think we have invested a lot of time in teams and that is valuable and there is a lot to learn from teams.  I think we have a lot of work to do and what I would like to say is we could bring in someone to do a check of what we are doing; I think the more useful thing is, and Mary touched on that but we come back to the school committee with a very concrete short and long term plan about what we are going to do.  If we do it and this changes, then you’re happy and it’s a good thing and if we do it and we bang our heads against the wall and it doesn’t change, then you come back to us or me or some combination and we start thinking about is it time to move people around and put people in different roles, bring in other folks with different skill sets.  That is how serious this is.  That is where we are.  J. St. Peter – the academic portion is one part but it may be a factor and may not be but the behavior issue is that if teachers can’t teach because of behavior issues, I don’t know if that is a problem or isn’t, it doesn’t matter what kind of system you have in place, kids can’t learn if there are other problems going on.  It is our duty as the committee to put our support behind the teachers and administration, if there are any hindrance to learning process, we fully support whatever measures you feel need to be taken to make sure the kids can learn as best they can in the setting that is productive to the majority of them.  S. Bannon – Rich, I think you idea is interesting and worth thinking about but from a school committee point of view, and I’m not trying to point fingers, one thing we have never done is turned down a request at budget time for additional support if it was warranted.  I think once again, I don’t think we should throw money at the issue but I think Peter’s idea of a short and long-term plan, which will include some budget ramifications, makes sense.  We are going down a one-way road that just isn’t the right road.  We need to figure this out and quickly.  I am not saying there are quick answers or solutions, but we can at least start to investigate.   I don’t pretend to be an education expert.  We learn a lot at the meetings and understand some of it and Rich is right.  I think Peter, what would you say would be a decent timeline to come back to us with some short and long term goals?  K. Farina – can I just jump in for a second?  What was interesting to me at looking at the analysis is that prior to getting this data, the work that the admin team had done in developing our district improvement plan this year, I think much of what we put in that plan and maybe we need to go back in and be very specific with measurable goals which is the feedback we received when you went over it, much of what we put in that improvement plan actually would support the work that we have identified that would also improve our work here in terms of Tier 1 and Tier 2 support, differentiated instruction and high-quality professional development to support staff K-12; aligning across buildings which we have not in years had a lot of time; looking at student grouping, etc.  I think some of that work we have already identified we can go back and look at.  S. Bannon – maybe we need to pull that out and bring it to us as part of the plan.  R. Dohoney – the school aligning thing won’t effect the elementary school.  D. Weston – I think it does a little.  K. Farina – I think the aligning of curriculum of K-12 with the new standards…R. Dohoney – no, that’s a good thing but whether you are aligned with another school you have never been to makes no difference on your test schools when you are an elementary school.  The middle school, if you weren’t aligned, then maybe it would throw you off track.  How can what you are going to learn in the future affect your test scores when you are in 3rd grade?  D. Weston – It is a little more complicated than that.  If there is one thing an elementary school teacher knows how to do or any teacher knows how to do, is blame the teacher from the year before.  When you have those conversations and understand what they need ahead of you, it actually does impact what you do in that grade.  When you understand what they need in 5th grade, it impacts the 3rd and 4th grade.   S. Bannon – Peter, I will go back to my question.  When do you think is a good time to have them come back to the school committee?  P. Dillon – I would like to check in with the principals on it.  The most accelerated thing could potentially be two weeks.  If we did it in a month it would be much deeper and more thoughtful.  S. Bannon – I don’t think any of us would disagree if we have you come back in two weeks with a plan that is not completely thought out, it would be a waster of all of our time; but if you come back in a month with a plan you are really able to think about and study, it would make more sense.  I don’t think speed is the main priority.  Getting this right is the main priority.  P. Dillon – maybe short and long-term is a funny way to describe it.  There are immediate things we can do that will be impactful this year; then there are things that will take longer to be impactful then there is always a little bit of a lag.  There is some good news in this if you dig down and your circle growth scores in particular grades, there is a lot to celebrate.  This is an honest conversation and it is a good one; it is not particularly pleasant.  I don’t want to be having this conversation again next year.  I don’t think we will be in the top 10% of the county next year, but I don’t think we will be where we are now next year.  R. Dohoney – Dan hit on this idea that there is too much time evaluating the kids and not enough time teaching them.  We hear a lot about professional development and team meeting and all this other stuff.  Do we have a problem with our teachers not spending enough time with their kids?  P. Dillon – we might.  Some of it might be totally a worthy investment.  You look at corporations, you look at other school, you look at highly successful schools…earlier in my career when I was a principal in East Harlem with a super needy population and we were terrible in the math test, the way we turned it around was I had every single teacher in that building, every math teacher, teach 9th grade math and they had tons of time to meet and get on exactly the same page about curriculum and the six classes of math would happen, they would all teach the same lesson and some of these kids would hit it out of the park and some wouldn’t.  We attributed that to what the teacher was doing and the other people knew what the teacher was doing, mimicked and took turns sharing lessons.  It was very deliberate and in a very quick time, the scores turned around dramatically.  That monkey was off our back.  Then we could focus on the deep meaningful learning.  I think there are opportunities to do that.  Things that take time, they exist on a continuum of useful or too much or professional development and I think we get a great return on our investment for that.  Folks gets pulled into lots of meetings.  Some of those meetings are transformational and some of them are not.  I am not talking about staff meetings but meetings with kids around IEPs or parent conferences.  They are legally required but we can look at who’s there at which meetings and why and under certain circumstances.  In different buildings, if a kid is having really bad day, that can suck lots of people in and sometimes we use our people well and intentionally and sometimes we don’t.  That is another thing to look at.  There is the assessment piece.  There are probably four or five others I’m not thinking about but the notion at looking at how we use our time, like how you fill your hours and somebody is doing an analysis….R. Dohoney – I can tell you what I do every six minutes.  P. Dillon – so that is a really useful activity and then you look “oh no, I talked to Peter for 24 minutes; I could have been doing something else”; there is a self-reflecting thing that we can all look at.  Even if your time is scheduled with kids, is that time used well.  Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t.  Maybe the day after Halloween you actually need to take a little more time to talk to kids about it and that is the most important thing in the world but looking at patterns and time we could do more of that.  R. Dohoney – my other question is…so this is really a total small piece of the puzzle and I don’t put a lot of stock in testing but it is an important thing, if there are these types of problems in our things how are we are a school supposed to know that.  Are you seeing problems of this magnitude in other aspects of how your judge our schools?  If everything else if great and we are having a bad testing run, I can live with that.  If everything is on this trend then….J. St. Peter – but there are other things….R. Dohoney – I know.  I’m on the school committee.  I want to know how we are doing on the other things.  P. Dillon – I could talk off the cuff and it would be ok?  What I would rather do, and we have been looking at rubrics and standards of practice, I would like to come back to you in a deliberate way and say “research shows that schools and districts do work in these ten domains and giving oneself a rating”, we have looked at this and done some of this already internally.  The hard thing is as administrators, we have been talking about this data for months, as a school committee and the public it has been talked about for a couple of weeks.  Looking at our own work across those domains, we could come back and say, we will do this with a plan, in these are areas we feel we are doing really good work; in these areas we are doing pretty good work but we are on the verge of doing something cool but in these areas, our work is underdeveloped or lagging.  I think we can come back in a deliberate and thoughtful way and share our sense of it, building by building, maybe grade by grade.  I want to do it in a high-structured, thoughtful way.  B. Fields – Can I offer something?  A test score, and I am reading from a consortium of innovative educational assessment director which is a consortium the state formed and funded by $350,000 to come up with some sort of holistic evidence that rates schools not on just what we are looking at tonight.  He says school climate – is it positive?  Do students feel safe?  Do students have strong relationships with each other and their teachers?  As you listen to me, think about the schools that we are making policy for.  Do students have strong relationships with each other and their teachers?  Are teachers employing effective practices?  Are the student being academically challenged?  Are student developing positive character traits?  Are they socially, emotionally and physically healthy?  That is not in here.  Those traits.  All we have is performance on a test.  I think school climate and the school levels have to be readjusted to account for these traits.  We don’t have the instrument to do that.  It is the state’s fault that we are here tonight devoting so much of our time about an instrument that the state has made us perform that itself is possibly invalid.  We should never rely, says Jack Snyder who is head of the consortium, on a single measure to make significant judgment about students or schools.  I think this needs to go out to the public.  I know Lenox is going to advertise that it is #1.  Why?  There is more than just a narrow test score as a measure of school quality.  To echo an often repeated comparison relying on test scores to measure school quality, it like relying on a thermometer to measure human health.  It is not the full picture.  Rating schools, level one, level two, level three, is an inherently problematic practice.  It sends a message to educators and families that they are in competition with each other and only some schools can be good.  I call it test and punish.  If the state is going to continue with this practice then is has a responsibility to do so thoroughly and accurately.  Until that day comes, parents and policymakers should proceed with extreme caution when looking at the levels assigned to schools and districts because levels likes looks can be deceiving.  P. Dillon – I don’t disagree with anything you are saying but it is a yes, and..not a yes, but.  B. Fields – I always talk about your comment to me when I started on this committee that we have to have a … and in my blindsightedness to deal with this testing, I never saw it but I see it now.  We need to look at alternatives.  The state puts us in this position.  That is what gets me ticked off.  It is the state that is putting us in this position.  There are so many good qualities to our schools.  I have a biased to the high school but I was asked ten years ago to be on a NESC and I headed school climate.  I was told by whoever the honcho who came in that that was really important and that test scores were not that important.  It was really how do the kids feel in that school?  I know maybe Rich is saying there goes Fields going all touchy feely again.  I’m not.  I am just saying there are so many more indicators that we should be telling parents that are saying well, I’m not going to send my kid to Monument Valley or Muddy Brook because they have a level and low scores.  Wait a minute.  Step back and look at all the positives.  That is what I am saying.  In a way I am supporting Peter.  I understand the performance and some of the concerns here.  I understand that.  Let’s look at the instrument we are being asked to make all these judgments on.  I know there is Pittsfield and there are other schools.  I could say that Pittsfield probably does a lot of test prep.  Is that what we want?  Lenox does a lot of test prep.  They used to do it when I had kids from Lenox because they talked about it.  Fine.  That is what they have chosen to do.  Do we want as a committee to commit to a curriculum that starts to go toward test prep because we had a group, a cohort that might not be strong?  It’s like SATs were at the high school many years ago.  We tried to explain that sometimes they are going to be up and sometimes they are going to be low.  For my own opinion, I tell people in the community, elementary school ain’t what it used to be.  I listen to Mary and what her staff has to put up with and has to deal with.  Opioid abuse, poverty, hunger, sleeplessness.  Come on.  You expect the test scores.  Look at the zip code that some of the communities are taking.  That will reflect the test scores.  It was definitely that way for the SAT.  P. Dillon – I totally agree with what you are saying.  I think it is important that; it is hard in Berkshire County but across the country…we are doing good work and working hard.  This is a point to make some adjustments and do more good work and work harder.  There are schools that serve similar populations and do better and worse and there are schools that serve more challenging populations and may do better or worse.  There are practices that are known and we should do more of those and meet kids where they are and move forward.  The trend in education is intentionally or not…there is a lot of blame.  You blame the state.  You blame society.  You blame the president.  You blame parents.  You blame everybody.  This may be a moment where all those things may contribute but at the end of the day we have six, seven hours with kids and we have to do the best we can with that time and I am confident we can continue to move kids forward and we will do that.

A little shift.  This is Amy’s inherited data.  She did a nice analysis of it.  In this, there is room for growth but also good news.  In the context, this is the place that got three kids into MIT last year.  Prep schools aren’t doing that.  There is some magic in our special sauce and we will hear some of that now and also some areas for growth.  A. Rex – this is a quick, at-a-glance..our composite performance index for ELA was about the target for the whole population.  There was a slight decline for our subgroup of high needs and economically disadvantaged students.  For math, it was consistent with last year; there was no change for all students.  Again there was a decline for our high needs subgroup and our economically disadvantaged students.  In ELA, 95% of our students were proficient or above.  Six of our students were 4% for needs improvement and there was sort of a split for those kids; some being on the lower end close to the failing range and the other half close to the proficient range.  We were above the state percentages for both advanced and proficient in ELA and in terms of needs improvement and failing, we had fewer than the state had.  In math, 91% of our students were proficient or above, however there was a stronger presentation in the lower range scores.  In ELA, our percentages were much closer to the high advanced and high proficient range; whereas in the math we were closer to needs improvement.  That is something that we need to pay attention to.  It is easy to dip below some of those levels.  15% of our students need improvement in math and that was a pretty 50/50 split between the high and low range of needs improvement so that meant about 7% of that group were close to failing.  4% of our students in that group were in the warning range.  These scores are below the state average so we didn’t perform quite so well there.  In terms of next steps, we want to focus our teachers on really looking at both our high needs students and our economically challenged students and the 20% or so students that were in that lower range of proficiency and trying to boost them up.  In math, there is definitely a dipping trend.  If you look and scores not only this year but two years ago, we have dipped a little bit each year.  I think we have already begun to gather data and support our math teachers in unpacking that data and identifying patterns they are seeing and where they might be some gaps in either instruction or curriculum.  Kristie and I both recognize that in the math department some work needs to be done in course alikes.  You have different teachers teaching the same course; like Peter gave the example, lesson by lesson they are getting the same curriculum and the same quality of instruction.

1. Dillon – In the next week, I will meet with the administrators and we will continue to build out our plan. We will do some specific stuff and will come back to you at either the next meeting or the meeting after that. S. Bannon – I think the meeting after that would make more sense or even farther out if needed.  D. Weston – do it when you are ready.  P. Dillon – thank you.  Not a comfortable conversation but a good conversation.  There are moving variables in this.  There is the curriculum and are there gaps between the curriculum as to how it is being assessed and there is instruction.  We will continue to work on that.

• Southern Berkshire Shared Services Project – P. Dillon – at our next meeting, I will share a formal written update on it. We had the technology assessment completed.  I am going to meet with the superintendents and technology directors next week about that and then I will come back to this group and give you an update on where we are in relation to the other districts and where there are possibilities for the six south counties to work together.  I mentioned the professional development stuff that is going on and I will give you a little update on grant writing and continuing to support some of that work.

Good News:

Muddy Brook Regional Elementary School –  Mary Berle,  Principal:  We had very positive student-led conferences last week.  Almost over 90% of our families came in.  We had wonderful feedback from families that they felt they were in good two-way conversations and engaged and learning about their kid’s work.  We also did a very brief communications survey as part of that.  The high-level results of the survey were that 45% of our families are extremely satisfied with communication; 36% are very satisfied, 23% are satisfied, 1% had no opinion, 1% dissatisfied and 1% very dissatisfied.  We have been focusing on home/school communication so that was good feedback.  75 children signed up for Warm the Children which is a very important way that the community makes sure children have winter clothing.  I think that is a record for us.  Christine Kelly has been doing a beautiful job reaching out to families, making sure we understand the need and meeting that.  We are about to embark on a very significant Thanksgiving For All project.  That is the annual food collection and putting together boxes for families.  Last night, 4th grade had their Day of the Dead Celebration.  It was extremely well received.  Fourth graders presents some awesome projects, particularly in Molly Cosel’s class, there were some group projects that showed beautiful teaming and detail.

Monument Mount Regional High School – Amy Rex, Principal:   The National Honor Society inducted 42 new members at a beautiful ceremony on October 15th.  From October 23rd the the 28th, we celebrated our school spirit and community with a series of events.  The week began with a community unity breakfast.  This was all organized by our student government.  That was followed by an assembly which included performances from our jazz band, the Spartones, the orchestra and news and announcements from our athletic teams and clubs as well as a student and faculty guest speaker.  On Tuesday, we had our first event in the Du Bois Lecture Series.  We did a daytime event where about 70 student attended.  It was very well received.  That evening, the community and over 100 people attended.  It was extremely inspirational and we are looking for to the next event which is in mid-December.  On Wednesday, students travelled to Great Barrington and painted their Halloween-themed windows and show showed off their creepy talents.  They were beautiful.  Friday, our teachers had our half day PD and many of our teachers travelled to do their peer observations at other schools.  This week they will be debriefing those and sharing some of the things they learned there.  We then wrapped up our week with Homecoming; football on Friday night, the cross country invitational on Saturday and a then a Homecoming dance, which I understand is the first one in six years.  We had over 280 students there.  It was amazing and lots of fun.  Fall Festival is coming up and students are working hard this week to wrap that up.  The performances are next Thursday and Friday night, then on Saturday the 18th at Lenox at Shakespeare.

1. Dillon – just a couple of things at the district or county level, election is a big day for professional development and almost all of the districts in the county are working together. There is something like 140 different offerings countywide; things are museums, galleries, schools. That should be a great opportunity for people to get together.  It is not just a one and done professional development but what happens out of this, outgoing groups form and meet on a regular basis and do stuff on a timeline.  At the end of it, we will do a survey and be able to share the feedback.

I sent in the packet and I will send it around, there is a group called Not in Our County and they have been asking folks around the county, elected officials, to sign a pledge.  The pledge is very much aligned with our work and what passed in Great Barrington at last year’s town meeting, a commitment to working together with my neighbors to create safer, more integrated communities for all residents in Berkshire County.  I do not stay silent in the face of intolerance or hate based on race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity, country of origin, ability or any other factor.  I work to acknowledge to and heal all forms of hate, bigotry and bullying.  I pledge to renew my commitment to this work everyday.  If you are interested in signing it, please do so.  Representative Pignatelli, State Senator Hines, and many others have already signed.  I think it is a neat thing and worth doing.  If you do it, you can leave it with me and I will get it to them or your can mail it yourself.  Part of the power of this is a grassroots effort and leveraging it on social media to take a picture of yourself and put in a hash tag #allhandsin and get all of your friends to see it, then they will do, etc.  All of a sudden hundreds of thousands people in Berkshire County will sign it.

Ari Cameron.  I am a community member and work with Multicultural Bridge.  It is a county-wide effort to stop hate and bullying and create safe and inclusive communities for all.  This is an effort led by Multicultural Bridge but it is a coalition of many organizations working together to make this happen.  Lily Schwartz; Great Barrington resident – it is a natural movement across the county to build the kind of communities that we want to live in.  Karen Clark; Not in Our County Steering Committee and I feel like this is the next step.  We have asked our select people and police officers to step up and say that they would be supportive so all can feel safe in our community.  Over 300 people so far have signed.   Kristen Piasecki – I am going to sign up right away and thank you for doing this.  Have the high school students been asked to sign this? Ari Cameron – we can certainly get all of the information to them.

Sub-Committee Reports:

• Policy Sub Committee: Bannon – in your packet, you will have subcommittee GBEC for the first reading which means we ask if anyone has any changes or comments on it.  If not, we will bring it back for a second reading at our next meeting and a vote to approve.  Any questions or comments?
• Building and Grounds Sub Committee: St. Peter – we met on October 18th before our Meet and Confer on two main topics.  One was the elementary school traffic issue.  Steve Soule as well as Peter and Mary did a great job of assessing the amount of cars as well as the amount of parking spots and concluded that unfortunately there are significantly more cars that need to park than parking spots available.  We have 84 spots plus handicapped spots and 15 in the circle.  We have 83 staff members as well as Head Start employees then 30-40 parents that drive to school.  Most feel they need to walk their kids into school so basically we don’t have enough parking spots and too many cars.  At the next meeting we are going to go forth on the solution.  Our main goal is to not pave more land, if it is a field or wetlands further north or if we can use the middle school parking for staff where the bus loading platform.  We are trying to figure out way to not have to park on the street and also keep costs down by not having to make any more parking lots.  That is a to be continued subject.  In preparation of the Meet and Confer with the high school, we looked at the updated capital asset plan and the budget plan so that Steve could be ready if there are any questions that came up during that meeting.  As far as the electricity and the phone, going forward Steve had mentioned that we are saving a considerable amount of money for electric as well as with the new phone system by removing the phones that were not needed when we put in the new system at the high school.  He is going to get back to us when we meet again in two weeks for the exact amount of savings on those two issues.
• Superintendent’s Evaluation Sub Committee: Weston – we need to schedule a meeting.  R. Dohoney – we are meeting with them anyway.  Do you want to try to coordinate all that?  P. Dillon/S. Bannon – we will get back to you on that.
• Technology Sub Committee: Potter – as discussed earlier, we will set something up.
• Finance Sub Committee: Dohoney – we met yesterday and received our presentation on the high school which is probably the best one we have had so far.  A real quality analysis of enrollment and breaking it out by teacher.  I think it was very informative and thorough.  There was also an interesting analysis of the finances around sports.  Once conclusion I reached on the community level is that football is an expensive sport.  S. Bannon – it was fascinating.  R. Dohoney – I think at this stage, we have had no discussions budgetwise, although I understand we are going to get a draft budget next time around but we had the data compiled better than we have ever had.  S. Bannon – we will be coming back to the school committee earlier than we ever have.  P. Dillon – months earlier.  S. Harrison – on November 15th we will be going into the finance subcommittee with our draft preliminary budget. Very, very early operating budget.  We are separating it out at the beginning because that is all the information we have is the operating.  We don’t have the state the governor’s budget.  We will bring that to the subcommittee on the 15th and then we are going to put a packet together for every member with all of the information that came out of all the presentations to the finance subcommittee and we will put it in a binder for you.  We are coming on December 7th to the school committee meeting.  We will do a brief operating budget draft presentation so you can see all the detail.  Then what we would like to do is have, in response to the school committee saying they would like more time to talk about the budget, we would like to have that as an agenda item for every meeting after that.  Subsequent to the meeting I had, maybe we pick a department or school or two for each meeting and we can talk a little more in depth about that so by the time you get the full presentation in February, you will have the detail and an understanding as to why decisions are made and a better understanding of where we are going longer term as well based on some of the discussions we had tonight.  P. Dillon – for people who have not been able to get to the finance committee meeting, the level of detail and analysis we had is much better than we ever had in the past.  Things connected to class size, program area, etc.  It is thoughtful and eye-opening.  R. Dohoney – Sharon and Peter have put together this information and at the finance committee meeting we are giving input into how it was presented and synthesized and what more needs to be seen, which is what I always thought the role of the finance committee should be; not to make decisions but to make sure everything this evaluated and organized properly.  I think it is working better.  S. Harrison – on the second request that I have been hearing is that the school committee have all of the requests and then we work backwards from that so you may see a larger budget than we typically bring at budget time and it may be larger than it will be in February but you are going to see a all-in based on what we talked about.
• District Consolidation & Sharing Sub-Committee: Dohoney – we are on the verge of having our meeting with the newly comprised subcommittee in Southern Berkshire about potential consolidation which is a monumental step which is good.  We haven’t confirmed that date yet.  We will meet with Richmond.  We laid out a schedule when we originally did this to meet with Richmond on certain days and we just need to stay on track with that.  We will discuss this task force thing and raise the issue up but at the pleasure of the full committee, we are kind of thinking we should bring up the tuition agreement at the next meeting.  Historically, I was negotiating through the chair but now we have this new committee.  Does anybody have concerns about that?  Yes?  No?  Don’t bring it up at the next meeting?  It’s up at the end of the year so we have to do something soon.  S. Bannon – we will bring up both Farmington River and Richmond.  R. Dohoney – our shared services agreement is up the end of the year as well.  P. Dillon – with Shaker.  R. Dohoney – I meant Shaker.

Personnel Report:

• Long-Term Substitute Appointment(s):
• Non-Certified Appointment(s)
• Leave of Absence
• Re-Assignment(s)
• Extra-Curricular Appointment(s)
• Volunteer(s)

   Name                            Position                                                   Fund              Salary/Stipend

                                                                                                          Source           Effective Date:

Business Operation: 

• FY17 Q4 Transfer Report Overview: Harrison – you should have all received the 4th quarter from last fiscal year and the new fiscal year.  I have my binder here if anyone has questions.  As you can see from the report, the majority of the transfers through the end of the year account balancing and closing.  There is nothing that spoke to me or jumped out other than I talked to you a little bit ago that we are looking at approximately 1.3 million in our END and that is where you can see it comes from transferring all of those accounts that were never spent.  S. Bannon – when will you be coming back to us with it.  S. Harrison – we are in the middle of the audit right now so I am hoping December.
• FY17 Transfer Report

MOTION to approve the FY17 Q4 Transfer Report: R. Dohoney     Seconded:  A. Potter      Accepted:  Unanimous

• FY18 Q1 Transfer Report Overview: Harrison – as is typical the first quarter of the new year is very small as we are just getting started.  There is not much just typical operating needs that are not known when we build the budget.

MOTION to approve the FY18 Q1 Transfer Report:  D. Weston        Seconded:  J. St. Peter     Accepted:  Unanimous

Education News:

Old Business:

New Business:

• Public Comment – E. Mooney – With regard to Next Steps, I thought the motion had a 20 number and a 21st number which would be teacher representative then somebody also mentioned adding a student but I didn’t hear that as part of the motion. Dohoney – it was part of the motion.  E. Mooney – you said he will represent Shaker Mountain and the Berkshire County Task Force…S. Bannon – there was a request from Shaker Mountain for Peter to do that and when we have our shared services meeting we are going to talk to Shaker Mountain and get more detail.  E. Mooney – so you are not saying that you are definitely going?  S. Bannon – we are going to talk to Shaker Mountain when we meet with them in the next few weeks.
• Written Communication
• Bannon – A bit of housekeeping; Peter and I noticed tonight that for the December meeting we have meetings one on the 7th and one on the 21st. We are going to cancel the 21st.

 MOTION TO ADJOURN:  R. Dohoney             Seconded:  B.Fields                 Accepted: Unanimous

The next school committee meeting will be held on November 16, 2017 – School Committee Meeting – Monument Mountain Regional High School Library – 7pm

Meeting Adjourned at 9:15pm

Submitted by:

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

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School Committee Secretary