School Committee Meeting - October 6, 2025

All right everyone it is now seven o'clock so we are ready to get started. Good evening and welcome to this October 6th meeting of the Somerville School Committee. Pursuant to Chapter 20 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting of the School Committee will be conducted via hybrid participation. We will post an audio recording, audio-video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive record of these proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the City of Somerville website and local cable access government channels.

Dr. Carmona, will you please call the roll?

Yes, through the chair. Ms. Piton? Present. Dr. Ackman? Mr. Green? Mr. Piton?

Here.

President Davis? Mayor Ballantyne? Ms. Barish?

Here.

Dr. Phillips?

Here.

Chair Kripchen? Here. We have quorum.

All right, we will start with a moment of silence and a salute to the flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Great, we will start with a report of our student representatives.

Yeah, thank you so much. Just to introduce myself again, because I know this is only our second week coming here, but I'm Bhavika Kalia, and I'm a junior. at Somerville High School. And just some updates about what's happening currently is that we will be having our homecoming dance on Saturday, October 25th at the high school. Our theme is Rio. and it's just going to be like a really colorful event and we're hoping to hopefully do a lot of fundraising out of it to help for the seniors prom

Yeah, thanks. So I'm Marlee Thrasher and I'm a junior at Somerville High School. Another big thing that's coming up is our college fair. It's going to be on Thursday, October 9th in the evening. We're going to have over 60 colleges in attendance. Usually this is a really good opportunity for students to scout out and meet people from a lot of local colleges. Some colleges travel from far away. I went last year and it was a really great opportunity to just get some information about like what the college process is a little bit like and see what some campuses are like a little bit just from like images and stuff. and so that's going to be a really good opportunity for our students

sorry yeah so another thing that's happening next wednesday is we will be having a latinx hispanic heritage month final celebration and either students can opt in to watch or play in a joint teacher-student soccer game on the outdoor field. Watch or play in a joint teacher-student volleyball game match in the gym. Or watch a movie showing of Selena starring Jennifer Lopez in the Highlander Forum. and this is just a really great way for students to get together and really celebrate the beauty of Hispanic culture at our school.

That's it from us today. Thank you.

Okay, thank you so much for that report. Do we have any questions or comments from my colleagues? It all sounds like exciting things happening at the high school, so thank you for that. Okay, if there are no specific questions or comments, we will move on to public comment. We have five people signed up and I don't believe we have anyone signed up remotely. Okay, so I will read the directions and then I will call the names three in a row so you know who is coming up. Welcome and thank you to those who have signed up for public comment. Speakers will be allowed three minutes to present their material. However, the chair may limit comments to two minutes based on the number of individuals signed up to speak. Since we only have five people signed up, you will have three minutes should you so choose to use them. Speakers should begin their comments by stating their name and address or, in the case of district employees, their role within the district. The chair of the meeting, after a warning, reserves the right to terminate speech which is not constitutionally protected because it constitutes true threats that are likely to provoke a violent reaction and cause a breach of the peace or incitement to imminent lawless conduct or which contains obscenities.

Public comment is not a discussion, debate, or dialogue between the public and the committee. Members of the committee will not reply to public comment in the course of the meeting, though individual members may follow up and items from public comment may be taken up in future meetings. The school committee will not hear personal complaints of school personnel nor against any member of the school community in public session. Individuals may address topics on the agenda or items within the school committee's scope of responsibility, such as the district budget, goals and policies, or role of the superintendent. The public is encouraged to submit comments and writing for inclusion in the public record. So with that, first I have Abby Hare followed by Samantha Steiner followed by Liz Eldridge. Abby, the floor is yours.

Hi everyone. My name is Abby. My name is Abby Hare and I live at 13 Quincy Street. I have kids at Capuano and East and my older one has an IEP. I am glad that you are hearing from the special education department this evening and I sincerely hope that the CPAC report will be part of your discussion. As you can probably tell from the over 60 emails you've received over the past few days, this is a big issue for Somerville constituents. People involved with and outside of special education are concerned. One of the reasons that I love Somerville is our commitment to equitable educational opportunities for all students. But when I read this report from CPAC, I worry that our actions don't always match our ideals, especially for the kids who need us most. We collect a lot of data, which is important, but there's often a disconnect between gathering information and taking meaningful action.

For years, the data has shown that students with disabilities are being left behind, and the most recent MCAS results show this problem is only worsening. The shift towards a stronger inclusion model is a step in the right direction. Same with all the programs that Mr. Arellano will lay out in his presentation. They sound great and I hope that they will be. But we need more. We need a robust tracking and a frank analysis of what programs and setups are truly working for our most vulnerable students and which are not. As the school committee, it is your job to ensure immediate oversight and require district leadership to present a comprehensive, data-driven plan with clear goals and deadlines. I also urge you to examine the child find process and hurdles families face when trying to get their child evaluated, regardless of what is on paper.

Even the most knowledgeable parents are told to wait and see for far too long while their child struggles. Families with fewer resources or less experience advocating face even greater barriers, worsening our already troubling achievement gap. Finally, I ask you to make what happens in schools, especially in special education, more transparent. Families want to be treated as respected partners in their children's education, but too often we are left out of the process. Thank you for your attention and I hope you will take bold, concrete steps to ensure that every Somerville student receives the education they deserve.

Next I have Samantha Steiner, followed by Liz Eldridge, followed by Jessica Adams. Samantha, the floor is yours.

Hi, my name is Sam Steiner. I live on Whitfield Road in Ward 7. I'm a parent and a CPAC member. The state has confirmed what families have known for years. SPS needs immediate assistance in special education. This is not just a department problem, it's a district-wide issue. Most students with IEPs are in general education classrooms. When schools become truly inclusive, all learners benefit. For me, this isn't just about data and test scores. It's about my five-year-old son, who's in his third year at Somerville Schools. Bright, curious, and full of love for learning, He now cries nearly every morning because a lack of support and belonging has taught him that school isn't always safe. He comes home drained after spending his energy trying to survive a system that wasn't designed to meet his needs. Our families fight for his basic services. Understanding dignity and inclusion is exhausting and heartbreaking. This isn't about blaming staff. Many are doing all they can to help.

But about fixing the systems that make it impossible for them and children like mine to thrive. This weekend the school committee responded to community emails by saying meaningful change is often slow. But after years of noncompliance, slow change is not neutral, it's harmful. You referenced the new working group to explore a true inclusion model. That work is important, but it cannot be an excuse for delay. The phrase itself is an admission. What we have now is not true inclusion. Meeting basic legal compliance is not a long-term goal. It's the vital first step to improving students' daily lives now. We need immediate, urgent action. This means writing IEPs based on student needs, not staffing, filling every vacancy, delivering every service owed on time.

Being accountable to students and families with measurable goals for improvement, fully transparent progress reporting, and shared power in decision making through authentic collaboration. When the state mandates intervention and families are organizing out of desperation, responding with talking points instead of urgency is dismissive. As a member of our district's Apple Institute team, a partnership with the Federation for Children with Special Needs, I recently completed training in preparation for our first session this week. The Federation teaches the same principles families have been advocating for. Co-design with families that goes beyond listening sessions and working groups to shared power and the vital advisory role of CPAC. Nothing about us without us. It's validating but frustrating because these are the same ideas the district dismissed when they came from families. The 2025 MCAS data for students with disabilities makes the impact of inaction clear.

Advanced coursework participation dropped 18 points in one year. In grade 10, only 12% meet expectations in ELA and just 4% in math. These aren't just numbers. They represent children losing access, opportunity, and hope. Our children cannot wait. We need urgent concrete action now. Thank you.

I have Liz Eldridge, followed by Jessica Adams, followed by Deshaun Simmons. Liz, the floor is yours.

Good evening. Thanks so much for having us tonight here. My name is Liz Eldridge and I'm chair of the Somerville Special Education Parents Advisory Council. This evening we'll hear an update surrounding special education and my comment relates to that. First, I want to thank everyone who read, contributed, and shared to this report. It certainly wasn't written overnight and expresses immense work and years of lived experience of families navigating a complex and often confusing system, trying to secure the support their children are legally and morally entitled to. This report has been shared widely with CPACs and advocates across the state and I'm proud to say this group's work right here is being recognized as a model for how parents' voices can drive systemic change. That's something that all of Somerville can be proud of. But pride alone isn't progress. Yet. For too long, special education in Somerville has taken a backseat. Too many families have felt invisible, unheard, or dismissed. Tonight is an opportunity to change that, to begin rebuilding.

This is not a moment of criticism, but a call for collaboration. We are a group of determined parents, parents who believe that when our most vulnerable learners are succeeding that means the whole system is working for everyone. We are here for equity, and until that equity is a lived experience for all of Somerville students, we'll continue to be here. So I ask, please work with us. Partner with us. Let's make Somerville a model, not just for special education, but for what happens when families and schools stand shoulder to shoulder for our children.

Thank you. I have Jessica Adams followed by Deshaun Simmons. Jessica, the floor is yours.

Hi. I'm doing something a little different tonight. I'm going to read a creative writing. It's called I Am an SPSIEP. You have no idea how hard it is to even bring me into existence in this district. Parents beg, teachers document, children drown in data, and that already proved that they need help. By the time I'm written, hope is already gasping for air. Early and ongoing intervention was supposed to be the key, but the City of Somerville chose to lock the door on SPS's children, approving a level service budget that was already out of compliance. That budget left classrooms without staff, therapists stretched beyond capacity, and families fighting exhaustion just to access rights that are not optional. Neurodivergent children are being diagnosed at higher rates nationally and statewide

Yet families in SPS aren't told when their child is quietly placed onto Tier 2 under MTSS. They aren't informed. They aren't invited. And when families finally do advocate for me and SPSIEP, they're told to wait or warned that we can't be giving them out all willy-nilly. As if a child's documented struggle were a privilege. As if early or any intervention were generosity and not law. That is not inclusion, that's coercion. Somerville calls itself a city of inclusion, the city that raised the first American flag in defiance of tyranny. But what does inclusion mean when classrooms are collapsing under impossible ratios and no transparent data? When teachers are asked to hold the weight of two jobs with no appropriate co-teacher? No paraprofessional and no true respite.

What does inclusion mean when Gen Ed students lose instruction time because teachers are triaging crises that should have been supported by law? It's not inclusion, it's erasure. The rights of children with disabilities, all their peers, and their teachers are bleeding out together in the very birthplace of American liberty. The birthplace of our flag has become the burial ground of child find and fap. I am an SPS IEP. I was written with trembling signatures and hope. I was promised counseling minutes, co-teachers, sensory supports, and transition help. But promises require people and our classrooms are running out. 12% of SPS students with disabilities can read at grade level. 10% can do math. 6,570 minutes of missed counseling in one year. Teachers forced to choose which child to not serve. This is not moderate progress toward targets.

This is our system in collapse and minimally funded by the city's choice. When CPAC brought the data forward, the response was initially silence and deflection. Compliance is... Compliance delayed is compliance denied. We need to call it what it is, needs assistance. I am an SPS IEP. I was created by law to guarantee free and appropriate public education.

I'm afraid your time is up.

Don't let me die here, not in the city that first raised the flag for freedom. Fund me, staff me, honor me, please.

Next, I have Deshaun Simmons.

And Chair, just to be clear, when we met earlier today discussing budget advocacy things, this is the forum for this comment, not later in the presentation?

Yeah, I think that this is good.

Good evening. My name is Deshawn Simmons. I'm a resident of Ward 7, a middle grades educator, and the proud president of the Somerville Educators Union. This evening, I wanted to highlight the partnership between the district and the union in addressing student needs in our district. I want to start by saying that not everything is perfect and some pieces haven't been perfect for a while. Our educators work tirelessly and they are tired. That said, what we have found to be true is that the district is willing to listen and make moves to be responsive to address these issues. This was evident during the budget process last year as district leadership, school committee members, and the SCU advocated fiercely for a budget that saw an additional millions of dollars added to the budget, which begins to correct decades of underinvestment in education. to put in place the support Somerville students deserve. This year, we are seeing more manageable workloads for special education providers and social-emotional educators, which means more protections for student service delivery.

The district also met the SCU with codifying best practices for reading and math intervention to maximize the success of those programs while attempting to avoid educator burnout in those processes. These were important priorities to the SU in the bargaining process, and we're thankful to the district that they made some real commitments in these areas. Admittedly, the progress is not as fast as we proposed, but we fully accept it as it is a step in the right direction. Perhaps one of my biggest priorities in the bargaining process last spring was to find a way to implement a true co-teaching model in the district to better meet the needs of each student in front of our educators. We understand that such an initiative costs more than the allocated budget allowed, and we appreciate the district naming it a priority for them as well. This year, East Somerville and Winter Hill are piloting a co-teaching model with a working group of educators, administrators, and family behind them documenting the best practices and procedures as we work to scale up the co-teaching model for future years.

Again, this is not as fast as we hoped or bargained for but we know that the change is coming. And talking with my union colleagues in other districts, this is not the typical partnership. Somerville Public Schools in recent years has continually made an effort to maintain a solid working relationship with the SCU so we can produce the best outcomes for students. That doesn't mean that we always agree. We often don't. But what I appreciate is that we're still able to have the conversation, move past our disagreements, and do what's best for our students and our educators. So on behalf of the SCU, thank you.

there's a great deal of work ahead and we appreciate the commitments into going to a better direction thank you thank you that concludes public comment and brings us to the report of the superintendent

Through the Chair, good evening everyone. Tonight's meeting is an important one focused on one of the most critical pillars of our strategic plan, academic excellence. I want to begin by expressing appreciation for the engagement of our families and the broader community. Your investments in our students, particularly your advocacy around access to strong special education supports, reflects how deeply we all care about the success of every child. Thank you for being here and for lending your voices. As a district, our vision is to foster a student-centered learning community where every student, honoring their unique strengths and background, is empowered to thrive through tailored supports and equitable access to opportunity. This evening, we will hear about the district's progress toward the vision in two important areas, special education and MCAS accountability.

We recognize that within any system, there are areas of strength and areas for growth. That is why we review data, including MCAS results, in context and with a commitment to evidence-based decisions. So that our next steps reflect both our progress and our responsibility to keep improving for the benefit of all our students. Our first presentation will begin with an overview of the recently released MCAS results. Samantha Elegine, our Director of Data Assessment and Accountability, will walk us through the data looking at the overall performance and trends and showing how we compare in some instances with neighboring districts and the state as a whole. What you will see is that we are still working to raise student achievement back to pre-pandemic levels. While the cumulative results are not where we want to be, there are meaningful signs of progress.

At various grade levels and in specific subject areas, student performance is improving. These gains reflect the right investment in curriculum and instruction that we have been making. We also recognize that change doesn't happen overnight. But when we look closely, school by school and grade by grade, we can see indicators that we are moving in the right direction with upward trends beginning to take shape. It is also important to keep in mind that MCAS is just one way we measure student achievement. It provides valuable insights, but we also look at tools like iReady and Dibbles, which offer different perspectives on student learning. Taking together, these assessments give us a fuller picture of where students are excelling and where we need to refine our strategies to support growth. I know this is a lot of data to take in and how we interpret and act on this data is vital to advancing academic excellence across the district.

So Dr. Boston-Davis, before we turn it over to Samantha, is there anything that you would like to add?

Thank you to the chair. Thank you, Dr. Carmona. I'd just like to welcome up our director, Samantha Elijin, who has been White, a partner in many of the academic initiatives that have moved forward. Beyond academics, she really supports, but including A lot of the new work that we have in place and so we'd like to thank Sam for all of her hard work and we'll pass it over to you to talk through our MCAS results.

That's great. Thank you, Dr. Carmona and Dr. Boston-Davis. Good evening, everyone. I am Sam Elagine, Director of Data Assessment and Accountability for Somerville Public Schools. I'm just here to present on our 2025 MCAS and accountability results. Next slide please. Wonderful. So over the last several years, we've really worked to create a strong culture of data in Somerville Public Schools and a regular practice of viewing data and using that to inform decision making and instructional practice. So some examples of the data that we review regularly include iReady for reading and math in grades three through eight, DIBELS, which is for students in grades K through five and measures early literacy, We have the access assessment, which measures students' English language proficiency for students in grades K through 12. We also have, of course, the MCAS, which we'll discuss here tonight. which is for ELA, math, science, and civics for students in grades three through eight.

And we of course also look at student work samples, unit assessments that happen tied to the curriculum as well. Some of the things that we look for when we're reviewing this data is for trends and patterns in the data over time, both related to students' achievement levels and also related to student growth. We also, of course, look at the data by different student subgroups, right? So for example, our multilingual learners, our students with disabilities, our students from low-income households. and we of course also look at the data keeping in mind any new initiatives or new efforts, new curriculum that we have going on at the time as well. Next slide please. So as I mentioned, because we have these numerous data sources that we have available to us, we always want to be mindful of how we're triangulating the data. So for instance, we have the MCAS, which is used by the state really for accountability purposes to see how students are mastering their grade level standards and making progress over time. And we in this district use the data in a couple of different ways.

So we of course review the achievement levels, which really tells us about how many students are meeting or exceeding grade level standards. We use student growth percentile information, or SGP, and that tells us how students are growing relative to their peers across the state who have performed similarly in the past. And we of course use the item level data which really tells us about the specific standards, specific items that students are mastering or struggling with. and we use this data in combination with other assessments such as I-Ready, such as DIBELS to really get a fuller picture of how a student is doing academically, how they're progressing in addition to other things like observations, Student Work Samples, Unit Assessments. Next slide please. So today we're gonna focus in on MCAS and accountability data. We'll start with achievement levels, then move on to student growth percentiles, student subgroup performance over time and then some of our accountability data and action plans of what we're doing to address the data that we see. Next slide please.

And next slide again. Thank you. So this table here just highlights our achievement levels. There's another slide after this which has the rest of the grades. But this table starts out showing our students in grades three through six in each of the subject areas. and we have a column that's the percentage of students that were meeting or exceeding expectations two years ago in 2024 and the percentage of students meeting or exceeding expectations This most recent assessment period in 2025. And the last column just shows you the percent change comparing those two different time periods. So as you can see right off the bat, some of the things that stand out to us are the increase that we saw in the percentage of students meeting or exceeding in fourth grade ELA, and also the increase in the percentage of students meeting or exceeding We also saw a decline, however, in fifth-grade ELA, most notably where we saw a

Decrease of three percentage points. Next slide, please. All right, and so this is similar data, but we're looking at grades seven through 10. This time, as you can see, we saw an increase in the percentage of students meeting their senior expectations in seventh grade ELA, and also in eighth grade math and science as well. You can definitely see there was a pretty substantial increase there for grade 7 ELA, a 7 percentage point increase. And we can see that there was a decline, most notably in 10th grade ELA. We saw a 9 percentage point decrease with it being 53% of students in 2024 to 44% of students this year. And this is consistent with the state's data as well. Across the state, I believe 10th grade ELA was the largest decline. and the percentage of students meeting or exceeding. I also just wanna highlight that we have some asterisks that are there in the table. If you look at eighth grade science, for example, and grade eight civics.

So that just denotes areas where we did on par or slightly better than the state's percentage of students meeting or exceeding. All right, next slide, please. Thank you. So now this is just really highlighting our average student growth percentiles. So again, student growth percentiles really tell us how did an individual student grow compared to students who performed similarly in past years across the state. and so DESE considers a student growth percentile of 40 to 60 to be in that moderate growth range so as you can see on the left hand side we have this chart which shows the average student growth percentile for students in grades three through eight in ELA and math and as you'll notice you know throughout the years we've typically remained in that moderate growth range that 40 to 60 range and on the right hand side you can see our average SGP for students in 10th grade for ELA and math. You'll note that for math, which is that orange line on the right hand side there, that we've definitely increased over time.

In 2019 our average SGP was 39 versus now in 2025 that being 49 so that's pretty notable. and again that puts us in that moderate growth range. Next slide please. And one more slide, thank you. So this data here is really highlighting the percentage of students that are meeting or exceeding expectations over the years for our different student subgroups. So this data is inclusive of Data from 2019 and then 2022 through 2025. And this just allows you to compare within each subgroup and subgroups to each other to see how they've performed over time. So as you'll notice looking at this slide here, for most of our subgroups, the performance has not quite reached back where we were pre-COVID in 2019, but it is notable that For one of our subgroups, our multiracial subgroup to be specific, actually is higher

Now in 2025 than they were in 2019, increasing from 19% of students meeting or exceeding to 25% of students meeting or exceeding. Unfortunately, we don't see a similar trend for other student subgroups. And as you'll notice, there are of course gaps in terms of the performance that we see across our different student subgroups as well. And this is just for third grade ELA. And this is a similar slide. This is for grades three through eight math to be specific. And again, we can see the differences, the disparities between our different subgroups of students here. and we could see their performance over time from 2019 through to 2025 and it's pretty similar to the trend that we saw right in ELA where we're seeing these disparities among our subgroups of students we haven't quite seen subgroups of students that are catching up to where they were Pre-COVID except for a multiracial subgroup, which is slightly higher than they were pre-COVID. Next slide, please.

So again, this is showing data for our students in grades five and eight and their science results over time. So here we notice that there are actually a few student subgroups that are performing better than they were. Back in 2019, so most notably our black student subgroup who had 28% of students that were media exceeding versus 29% of students in 2025. and our multiracial subgroup who had 59% of students media exceeding compared to 72% in 2025. So we are seeing an increase in some of our subgroups, but most of our subgroups kind of remaining below that 2019 pre-COVID performance. We also saw an abnormal dip among our Asian student subgroup, which went from 60% to 36% of students that were media exceeding, which is a little bit of an anomalous compared to the past two years of performance. Next slide, please. Thank you. So this is just really highlighting our Grade 8 civics data.

So two years ago, we did a pilot of the civics MCAS assessment, and last year was the first full year of implementation for the assessment. And so again, we have one year of data here, but we could see similar disparities to what we saw with our ELA math and science results. Next slide, please. Thank you. So this is showing our percentage of students meeting or exceeding at the high school level. So pretty similar to what we were observing before. Most of our subgroups are lower than where they were pre-COVID. Specifically in ELA, in some cases we notice that subgroups are performing better in 2025 compared to pre-COVID. An example of that being our former multilingual learners group and our multilingual learners group, which you can see if you look at the math chart, which is in the center.

And we see some mixed results in terms of our science results by subgroup. In some cases, on par with how they were doing pre-COVID. In some cases, lower as well. Next slide, please. All right. Next slide. Thank you. So now we just want to transition to talking about some accountability results. So these are the main indicators that are covered. and determining accountability for schools and districts across the state. So one of the key indicators is MCAS achievement. So that's of course related to how students performed across the ELA, math and science MCAS. We have student growth on the MCAS assessment, so that goes back to the student growth percentiles we talked about for math and for ELA. And then we also have several factors related to high school completion, including the four year cohort graduation rate, Our extended engagement rate and our annual dropout rate.

And we have indicators related to progress towards English language proficiency, which is measured by the access assessment, which is for multilingual learners. We have chronic absenteeism, right, which is about Students that are missing 10% or more days of school in the year. And we have advanced coursework completion, which is about students that are juniors and seniors in high school. Completing Advanced Coursework. Next slide, please. So it's a little bit difficult to make out, but this is our district level report for accountability from the state. Some of the key highlights that you'll notice are kind of highlighted here under areas of strength and areas for growth. So one of the areas of strength was that we saw a decrease in chronic absenteeism both for our non-high school and our high school students. which is great so that means that we have students that are showing up to school not missing 10% or more days of school which is a positive sign.

We also met our ELA and Math MCAS growth targets for grades three through eight students, and we met our English language proficiency target at the high school level. Areas for growth include a decline that we saw in ELA and math MCAS performance at the high school level. We had a decline in performance for our four-year graduation rate. We also saw a decline for our advanced coursework completion rate. And just to clarify to the point system, so across each of the indicators that we have you can earn four points. Zero points meaning that there was a decline, one point meaning no change, two points meaning slight improvement, three meaning that you met your target, and four meaning that you exceeded your target. Next slide, please. Perfect. So this table here is showing the accountability results broken up by each of the schools in our district and for the district overall. So that middle column tells us our criterion reference target percentage.

and that is really about how each of the schools in our district and the district overall is making progress towards the targets set for us by DESE. So you can see For the Agenziano, that 78% was their target criteria and reference target percentage, which put them in the meeting targets range. For the Healy, we saw 58% of students that were We saw 58% for their criterion reference target percentage, which put them in the substantial progress towards target range. For the Brown, we saw 71% as their criterion reference target percentage, putting them that substantial progress towards targets. Similar for the East, 54%, 64% for the Kennedy, 46% for the West, 31% for the Winter Hill, 22% for Somerville High School, and for the district overall, 47% progress towards our criterion reference target percentage.

and you'll notice on the right hand column we also have our accountability percentiles. So the accountability percentiles are a little bit different than our criterion reference target percentages. Whereas the criterion reference target percentages are about our progress towards the target set for us by DESE, the accountability percentile is really comparing us to comparable schools across the state. And when I say comparable, that just means schools serving like relatively similar grade levels to us. So comparing high schools, for example, to other high schools and comparing non-high schools to non-high schools. And so you'll notice one of the schools that was flagged for accountability reasons, which is that red asterisk that you'll notice next to the school's names, was the Winter Hill who had an accountability percentile of nine. And you'll notice that the West Somerville was also flagged for accountability purposes, that red asterisk, and that was due to low subgroup performance for their Hispanic or Latino student subgroup. and lastly next wave was flagged for accountability purposes due to assessment participation. Yes. Next slide please. Thank you.

So as I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, we really are committed to using data and reviewing data and taking that into account in our decision making and our practices. So that looks like sitting down with principals at the beginning of year every year to review our data, whether it's MCAS, accountability results, iReady, DIBELS, something that we did today at our all administrative team meeting, So we really are committed to reviewing this data and thinking of what we can do, what actions can we take to lead to more positive student outcomes. Some of the things that we're committed to doing include things like investing in high-quality instructional materials. As many of you likely know, we've gone through multiple curriculum review cycles, are in the process of implementing new curriculum, and we've invested over $600,000 in new curriculum. Another action that we're committed to is our vision for excellent instruction in SPS, and that's really rooted in instructional practices that we know to work for students. That includes things like fostering positive classroom culture,

Student focused planning and preparation, making grade level content accessible for all learners, and promoting student agency and engagement in the classroom. We're also committed to our common planning time initiative, which has really given educators time to meet and discuss data and be very data driven. And that's something that we've been hearing a lot of positive feedback over at the beginning of this year as we started to see CPT meetings happening. having people come up to me like oh we're using data in our meetings and it's going really well like people are hungry for more data like what can we review what can we use to really understand you know how our students are doing how they're making progress and so that's really music to my ears truly We also have an investment in i-Ready Personalized Instruction and so this is a tool that's available to students in grades three through eight. As you know we have the i-Ready assessment and this personalized instruction component really targets lessons to students based off of their needs.

and so that's another supplemental tool which we're really excited to have and folks are already starting to use and hearing a lot of positive feedback about. and lastly we have a large foundational grant that we're anticipating which would really allow us to continue to focus on strengthening school instructional leadership which has been a big focus area over the last several years and so we're really excited about that work to come. And I believe that was my last slide, so I will leave it there and take any questions that folks may have.

Okay. Thank you so much for that. I'm sure there will be questions and comments from my colleagues. Dr. Phillips.

Thanks through you, Chair. Thank you for the fabulous presentation and the deep dive. I'm looking on that last slide. What are we doing given what we see in all these data? And I'm noticing that I think just about every single one of those five pillars is new in implementation since we've had the superintendent and I'm wondering if anyone on the administrative team can give me a sense of We've just made a ton of enormous investments. Like, based on the literature, when would we think they would really start to pay off?

If I can take a stab at that. So I'm just going to frame this from the outside as well in terms of when I hear often that we're aiming to pre-pandemic levels of performance, I hear that the commissioner basically shared the concern that many districts were in the same place that are still far reaching from that target. For us, I also think we need to think about the fact that we did not have a pre, the baseline, we did not have instructional materials to start with. that were high quality instructional materials. So we put that in place and then depending on the implementation of each of the stages of the materials that we put out, we have literacy, we have math, we have science, And so depending on the grade level, you have had more familiarity with the instructional design of the work.

I think that like everything, even the time that it takes a building to establish its routines and procedures, The average is around three to five years to actually get it settled. And that's assuming that all things are in place. And so I do think that In the life of a child is actually a long time, is that right? Because our kids are learning. And so I think that in order to get to that maturity level of a teacher being able to implement something with the sense of There we go through the chair

This is awesome. I appreciate it. I really want to commend specifically the data visualization that you did on the subgroup slides like you know distilling this down while not losing the substance of what you're trying to say. I mean, I know I don't have to tell you, but it's like very, very, very hard. And like the way you used color, like, you know, It's an honest assessment of where we're at. It's an honest assessment of where we've come while being Good. It was good visually. Like I don't have better words right now. Thank you. So like I wanted to highlight those slides. Those were very impressive and I hope like we get those if they're not already on our website I hope we get them up as as soon as possible because like I think that is a great way of sort of

Showing, showcasing MCAS data, especially with subgroups. So I'm curious in that final slide that's still up, this is probably through the chair to the superintendent. like as someone who has applied for many grants in my professional career like it is not often that you can like be confident going into it and so you know into like Like planning that you're going to get it. So, you know, how do we know that we can be anticipating this significant grant and If we're moderately confident, not really confident, do we have a backup plan?

Thank you to the chair so we we are confident that we're receiving the grant however the Foundation that is giving us the grant has a publicity, a communication plan. that they'd like us to adhere to and so in working with Sam and our new communications officer Darrell Nash who wisely advised that we rephrase it in this way But I will say that it is work that we've already discussed.

I have Ms. Barish and then Mr. Green.

Thank you. I just wanted to follow up on Dr. Phillips' question about how long we would expect it to take to see the results of all of the investment the district is making. I just wondered if you could touch on some of the ways that the district is supporting Teachers, I think in the hopes of making it closer to three years than five years. I mean, immediately I'm thinking about common planning time. and the professional development around the new curriculums that are being implemented. But if there are other things that you could share with us, that'd be great.

Can I just start with that? So in terms of changes in trajectory or outcomes, I think that I Refer to the MCAS when we were talking about impact on numbers. We do now have reference to how some of the things that we have put in place are impacting the trajectory of the students. And the DIBELS and the I-READY have shown a steady improvement for K-2 or K-3, K-2 across the board. And I already also has shown that we are moving across the board. There's a fourth grade I think is the only grade Seems to have a dip in, because it's three years of data. So there are some categories, or some, As far as how we make corrections there are a couple of things.

As you know, we last year when we were also in need of assistance with the Department of Ed or for a couple of the schools that needed some support, We had some collaboration with TNTP as well as the heirs. There's an heirs report. One of the things that they have done with us is walk through buildings, assess the level of gaps that they might identify as an area where we need to work. So I think the work is being triangulated with both the feedback that we get from the Department of Ed feedback, as well as the work that we do in our instructional rounds, as well as the data. I think that there's nothing that we actually take as an absolute. I think everything that we do is always wondering how can we do it better. As far as instruction and support for teachers, I'll let Jess build a little bit on that because I know we have made some adjustments. The last thing I will say is that

One of the differences that we put in place from last year to this year, or at the end of last year, one of the things that principals In our conversation around how do we best support the implementation of our new programs is by also being more present and providing more feedback to teachers to do a little bit of both coaching and corrective action around how do we do this best. Because the reality though is that You can actually learn about a program, but the best way to actually accelerate your learning is by being embedded in the place where you actually can get more feedback. The coaching is another way to do that work. But intentionally, we actually have chosen to use data as to We have to inform instructional leadership in our district and that's one of the things that we did today is just to make sure that we all have a clear understanding of what are we monitoring and how are we monitoring the support across all grade levels.

Absolutely, I'll add to that. Thank you. In addition to all that the superintendents just discussed, I'll add a couple of things. The first is that we are definitely making an investment on trying to strengthen our schools School leaders as instructional leaders and that a strong instructional leader will help support the entire building and so if an educator can go to a strong instructional leader for feedback for thought partnership to help through MTSS processes that is that's pivotal I mean there's a lot of research that shows how important the role of a strong principal as an instructional leader is to move I think that strong investment on our school leaders is also to then help what's happening in the classroom.

In addition to all the other structures that you've mentioned, I just will also add that we're putting a lot of tools in place to help educators do the work. Under Sam's leadership, we launched Open Architects across our district. This is our new data system. I may not have used the best sophisticated language at that and Sam will help me if there's a better way to describe it but simply stated a data system we used to use a system called student insights which served our purposes really well but Open Architects is kind of a new version and there are some incredible things you can ways you can visualize data using Open Architects and all of our educators have access SAM trained did a training call for all educators at the beginning of the school year as well as a deep dive for our common planning time leader so that they can lead their their teams so to speak to the common planning time

Other tools include the personalized learning like we discussed, obviously the curriculum, and Dr. Carmona mentioned the TNTP walkthroughs, thinking about curriculum implementation. I think another thing that I'll add is because I'm listing a number of things and I think this is important is we are actively it's kind of not a It's not a stated priority, but it is a priority in our work building coherence across all of these systems. That shows up sometimes in the things that you see, so you'll notice I mean from the way our school improvement plans are aligned to the strategic plan that are aligned to how we do instructional rounds to the areas of emphasis that we're asking our school leaders to engage in and ways to look inside classrooms to support educators. We're trying to really make things, all of these initiatives make sense and work together.

and I think that's our hope is that that really does also support educators because they are the ones you know really leading the work and so the coherence is in support of that as well.

I have Mr. Green, Ms. Pitone, and then Dr. Ackman.

Yeah, two things. First of all, to Dr. Ackman's point about the... As someone who gives philanthropic gifts as part of my job, I 100% respect and understand the desire to follow the I can only think of three or four foundations who would be in line and give a gift like this, and all of them are very image conscious, so that's not ruining a good relationship. So, as I do every year, I'm going to have lots of very nitpicky, detailed questions that will follow up in an email. because we can dive into these together every year. One of my favorite times talking to you is when I do this with you every year at Boston Davis. But there is one data point that I want to flag now because it was... Interesting to me, and that is the local and statewide dip in 10th grade ELA scores.

Now I am not, I'm the first person to point out that the plural of the antidote is not data. But it is worth noting that I have heard anecdotally a distinct rise in the number of students, frankly at all grade levels, but especially at the 10th grade level, who are aware of the fact that MCAT scores don't matter to them as students anymore and perhaps treat that accordingly. So I'm curious to know, I think we should do with all data points with MCAS. If you look at it as a multi-year average, how that shakes out going forward, especially since I also know anecdotally that there were students in 10th grade who would have in prior years tried to find ways to get out of the MCAS and opt out of it who are now taking it. So I am curious to know Given from a policy perspective that we know that high stakes attached to tests can distort the results of those tests,

what five years from now we'll be seeing in the 10th grade scores and if that's perhaps a more accurate reflection of where students actually are diagnostically than if they're prepping for it as an exit exam. especially when I remember that they also raised what musicitation was one or two years ago I can't remember um All right, that's my thought. Thank you. So if we're using this as a diagnostic tool, which is, to me, at a macro level, the point of MCAS, then we have to... We remember that we're also in the middle of establishing new baselines. Or am I missing something?

Anyone want to respond?

So it's interesting when we, I mean again, MCAS data is a reference point I think is valuable in the sense that is criterion reference and is also based on our own performance in comparison to other districts so I think that that always allows us to establish a comparison One of the things that I know from the feedback we have gotten from the high school is that there were a lot of ELA answers that were left and ELA questions that were unanswered. And so we are still trying to get the depth of this problem or this phenomena. I know that statewide the numbers have been similar across the board in 10th grade.

I do worry that in part my first hunch and hypothesis is that sometimes the students who are encountered with very complex texts, they just basically knowing that there's no accountability there, so they just don't do it. But that also speaks to the question of like regardless of the complexity of the test, I think kids should be able to respond to It is a question we are analyzing with the high school. We don't have the exact number of questions that were left unanswered, but it is a concerning trend.

Do you want to also respond? Okay. All right.

Ms. Pitone? Through you. I was looking at the growth percentiles obviously we spend a lot of energy trying to see you know obviously there's the raw data which when you just look at it by itself can be quite shocking and then there's also where are we going have we made improvement are our kids getting into getting to a better place relative to where they were the previous year I saw, you know, you spoke briefly about the math changes. I don't want to make any assumptions. I know we've made changes at the middle school level with our curriculum in math probably three to five years ago. I could be wrong. I don't want to make the assumption that that was some kind of lift for our students, but I'm curious, what are you seeing as maybe the source of this improvement, or maybe it could just be a piece of data that next year could be in a different place.

That's a great question.

And what we learned from it.

No, yeah, of course. I mean, that's a great question. I think it's kind of what you hunched at before, which is that there's so many different things that could be causing that, right? So one of it could be changes to curriculum that happen in students as they moved up. had that strong math foundation and it's reflecting the test scores. It could be that the high school test for math is slightly different than the eighth grade test for math. it could be the courses that students are taking in high school as well so it's a little bit difficult for us to nail down exactly which one it is but it could be any of those factors really and I'm not sure if you either of you have

Thank you for the chair I am really into hearing about how teachers have started using it using it for common planning time my understanding from data or from like research on like best practices for school use of data is also getting students to own their data and so I would love to hear if that is not already like starting to be piloted I'm hoping that the district is you know planning to start you know figuring out how to get students to like see their data own their data um and i would love to you know and if that's not in in the trajectory i assume there's a very thoughtful reason why i'd like to know Thank you.

Want to respond? Dr. Rosen-Davis?

Sure, through the chair. Thank you for that feedback. And I agree and have my own experiences as an educator tracking. What I've noticed across our district is that I've noticed You know kind of visually it varies from school to school and classroom to classroom. So I'll say from the district perspective there's not yet a study way in which we're asking students to kind of track and and We will definitely look into it.

So I could just also build up on that. So there's not a formal design around that, but there is. So I know the East, for example, is full-fledged deployment of the Cereta Hammond work. and I know that it's not just owning the data but owning your learning and I think that ultimately when we can actually have a student say hmm I do not know I know what I don't know. I'm going to ask someone. To me, that's even a much more critical skill set than just knowing your numbers. It's just like how do I know as a learner I'm not getting where I need to go? So that's, and it's within the Serrera-Hammond framework. It's not necessarily something we have said intentionally. We wanted everyone to do this, And that is kind of a higher order skill that we probably will get as we move into the implementation of that. I know, I mean, a conversation I had with this morning with the principal was,

From last year to this year, obviously they have had a very positive trajectory in terms of their growth, their non-criterion reference. And so that's very positive. You walk into a classroom, you also see that the level of engagement for the most part in most classes. I do still, I am concerned. I know that there is a Nationwide as well as statewide, there are similar levels of performance, but that is still is something that we are addressing right now and is definitely an area of concern.

Part of the issue that we're trying to implement by building the high-quality instructional materials is to make sure most of our students spend 70% to 80% of their time in the classroom. Improvement will have a direct impact on students as well. And so that is definitely an area of concern, and I think that looking at the pattern of the data along some of our subgroups is something that is quite concerning. But I think the trajectory that we have along the three pillars of high quality instructional material, data assessment, and also making sure that We continuously come back to working with teams to make sure that the work that happens through CPT and teamwork is

helps build a collective understanding of the challenges of the growth that happens through the new learning and allows us to get to the real issue of making sure that every student is making gains.

So I have a quick question, and then I have Mr. Green, Ms. Pitone, and Dr. Phillips. Talking about our MLE students, the MCAS is entirely in English. Is that correct? So are students who are still learning English for taking the test in English. Is that correct?

Yes, that's correct, except for our first-year multilingual learners who don't take the ELAM test.

Thank you. Just to give a little bit of context for the community as well. So we also have a metric called the access data that allows us to actually make a correlation between how students Our access data is also It shows that we need to develop more language skills in the classroom. So I think that we have some other tools that allow us to see what are some of the gaps that are taking place. But the thing that is very complex for a student who is just developing a language and being able to perform at a grade level standard is very difficult. And so that trajectory of growth is very hard to measure through MCAS. The only thing that allows us to actually have A good understanding of that trajectory is the access data, because year by year would allow us to get a sense of how it's happening. and just one more thing to say around that. When I have spoken to principals and say, look, my access data is not really reflecting all the effort that I put into.

When I sit down with them and look at grade level Improvements, you can see that some grade levels have 60 to 70% and some other grade levels have 10 and 20%. So when we actually look at this data in the aggregate, sometimes we can miss some of the nuance around where are some of the places where this data is breaking down.

Thank you. I had Mr. Green, Ms. Pitone, Dr. Phillips, and then Mr. Pitone. Fair enough. Okay. Mr. Green.

yeah thank you for that um so you know and every time we we have this One of the disadvantages of doing this many times is every time we have the conversation, we all feel the need to express our understanding of the limitations of the MCAS data, which are real, and then also express that we're not dismissing the MCAS data as we shouldn't. But it, you know, but it's, as we all expressed in a million ways, super nuanced, super complicated, and actually I think one of the incidences of weakness is that's actually really bad at tracking either your changes in a meaningful way that captures Meaningful Progress. But all that being said, I think the biggest weakness for Newcastle, and that's relevant to my question, is the accountability rating in the state

Sorry, in a country where the standardized test scores track at like a .9 correlation of socioeconomic status and in a state that is the sixth most segregated state in the country. So comparing our progress to the progress of our friends in Wellesley and Concord isn't even comparing apples to oranges, it's comparing apples to steaks. That said, I know in every field, when we talk at our conferences and our things, there's usually that like, oh, this town or this city or this state or whatever is doing X really well, the combination people have. So I am confident that there is some urban district that is moving the needle on test scores with low-income students better than we are.

I don't know who that was. And I ask this with a moderate degree of concern because I know the answer nationally is actually Louisiana and Mississippi are doing that really well. on test scores, but I also know that they're doing that by turning low-income schools into drill-and-kill academies that are only increasing test scores and not increasing outcomes for students outside of graduation. So I'm wondering, do you know of a district in Massachusetts that is moving the needle and is doing it in a way Doing more than just increasing test scores, but actually improving outcomes.

So again, the accountability data was just released. I haven't done that research yet. I usually do. I usually go and check and see who is I know Revere at some point, I think last year, had some strong outcomes along the lines of early literacy, but that wouldn't show up in the MCAS. So I will be doing that. And we haven't, again, we just, this data was released recently. I don't know if Sam might have any answer.

Yeah, no, I was looking at this earlier this week, actually. So I agree with what you said in terms of being mindful of who we're comparing ourselves to. And so I usually like to look at Districts that DESE identified as comparable to us using their DART tool. And that's based off of districts that have a similar student enrollment as us. And that's based off things like low income status, the enrollment size, percent of students that are multilingual learners, and percent of students who are special education. and so some of our comparable districts are places like Barnstable, Malden, Methuen, Milford, Peabody, Quincy, Stoughton, Waltham, West Springfield and Woburn. and just looking at how we compared to them I noticed that Quincy was one that outperformed out of that group of comparable districts and so I'd be curious to hear like what they're doing that's working for their students and if there's something that's similar to what we're doing if there's something that during they're doing that we're not We have a couple of comparable districts that we look to to see how we're doing relative to.

Do you want to follow up, Serena?

First of all, thank you for that. I'm super excited to hear what you hear on that. And I really appreciate Dr. Carmona pointing out that some of the most important changes we see don't show up on test scores and may never show up in tests because we don't test for that. I think a lot of actually, because I actually am concerned that the quality of education in Somerville, Massachusetts and the country has gone down. But I think the most places you'll see that are the places that we don't test. Dr. Davis and I have talked about the fact that Kids across the country read fewer long books because we have no way of testing for it. And so if you're trying to maximize ELA scores, you have more time on short works than long works. The ability to track and follow complicated threads over long periods of work is an important skill in life.

That's why I want to make sure that when we look at districts that are improving test scores, We're looking at districts that are doing it the right way, even if that way doesn't necessarily lead to immediate improvement.

Yes, thank you. Thank you, everyone. And the one thing that I want to add on to this conversation and just appreciate those comments, well, there's two things. One, it reminds me back to our curriculum selection and the criteria that our students Our team decided on was making sure that we had authentic texts for our students despite there being really popular curriculums now that have been known to get results but have without without placing judgment just the factual you know not authentic books as the core texts and so you know some of those trade-offs have to you know well I think we landed on a very strong curriculum but those are some considerations when we're making some of the decisions at the district level and the other thing that I'll say is that one of the many

Shortcomings of having an MCAS as the one standardized summative assessment at the end is that I see some really promising practices. I'm thinking about something I've seen at Malden, as Sam listed, as one of our similar districts. Very innovative. I won't know until this time next year because it was piloted there last year and now the whole district is doing a new way in which Thinking about literacy in structures across schools. And so I hope to maybe look at other forms of their assessments such as they use I-Ready as well. to see how they're making progress because it is limiting when we can only look at the final MCAS scores a year after they've made a change. So then we would need to wait another year to implement that for ourselves.

Ms. Pitone, and then Dr. Phillips, and then Mr. Pitone.

Thank you, through you. I think my question is slightly related to some of the framing that Mr. Green did. The superintendent alluded to East Somerville and that they've had progress. whatever progress means. I'm you know a little bit more knowledge than the average parent but not any expert in this work so I go to DESE and I start like going backwards on accountability and looking at each year. What is a good way to capture that Or is there something better than MCAS to show a trend in maybe not accountability, but whatever way we can say that we're seeing improvements? and part of this is me just reading into what you said Superintendent Carmona like they've made progress and is that about their accountability percentile is that about you know being substantial versus moderate like how are you I feel like I'm missing the Gestalt by school, and maybe that needs to sit in the SIP, I don't know.

But these are the questions that kind of come into mind when you say things like, oh, this school is doing better. and I look at the numbers and going well where were they and I don't know I just want to think about a way to represent that in a positive way that's helpful for families to see that.

Yeah, so that's a great question. So just on my anecdotal reference, which I'll bring to you, part of that is the feel in the building as to how many students are basically engaged in their work. You come into a room where kids are actually discussing a book and you look around and every kid is actually sitting interacting with another kid talking about a book and the teacher just walking around. To me that's like I can see visible learning. Correct. So that's one thing. And again, ILTs, the instructional leadership teams, have decided also to do walkthroughs to actually identify alone certain indicators. indicators that also were discussed at some point through the Department of Ed recommendations as to what are some of the strong indicators for performance. So they are doing that collaboratively as teams through a mechanism of collective efficacy with the ILT. So that's one thing. I think the second thing is growth.

I often look at the SGP as a reference because no matter where a student comes in, what is the growth from one level to the next? You can track that. You can track that by grade level. You can track that by cohort. And so that's one thing that always, is a good reference. In prior districts where I was, 50 was the point that we use as a reference. I think moderate progress that the state calls 40 to 60 moderate progress, is that right? And so I think that that is a reference. Access also has some metrics to determine what is moderate progress. I already has also ways to determine what is a strong progress, what is a moderate progress. Dibbles and I already have core at grade level.

So I think there are a little bit more nuance to say this is the number that we use as a reference. So within each indicator, there are ways to determine that. So in general, though, in terms of MCAS, again, between 40 to 60 is a... and so on.

Yeah, no, I would just reiterate some of the points that Dr. Carmona mentioned about using multiple indicators to track progress. A couple of them, you know, you both already said. Things like looking at the accountability reports to see, you know, how's the criterion reference target percentage Changing year over year. How is the school percentile changing year over year? But we also definitely look at things like I-ready growth, which is a little bit different than MCAS growth. That's really based off whether students are meeting individual targets set for them. based off of scaled score improvement on I-Ready. But that's a big one that we definitely look at to see what percentage of students in the school are meeting their growth target, both the typical growth target but also the stretch growth target which is needed to get students up to grade level standards within a few years. So that's another indicator that we definitely look at heavily year to year.

Thanks. Through you, Chair, I hope you'll all bear with me while I give a shout out to my own children's school, the Argenziano, which is leading our district on the criterion reference target percentage, I think. That is due to a whole lot of hard work by the administration, the instructional leadership team, the educators, the school improvement council. They've all been rowing hard and it shows. So I'd like to just shift to a version of a question I ask all the time, which is, hey, they are positive deviants. What are they doing right that the rest of the district can learn from?

Well, I would like to volunteer a couple of things. So you have two strong leaders that actually are very consistent about instructional priorities. Every time I do my walkthroughs with Glenda, the conversation is, tell me what is the point of improvement for this teacher? How are you supporting that? And she's very clear in every detail as to when I had a conversation, this is what I'm seeing, this is what I'm noticing. Very clear about the priorities in the building and what are the growth trajectories for her teachers. She looks at the data, she's coming back to the data, she is very intentional about The work. And she also, you know, is clear about how that correlates also with the environment, the sense of belonging. So that's, you know, that's...

All right, well this is that I have which is also related to the research around when you have a strong leadership in a building that pays off and so I think that and and you know when you walk into the building there's this sense of enjoyment that it is also you know freely which I think has a strong correlation also too. If the students are feeling that they are in a place where they belong, they also will perform better.

Mr. Biton and then Ms. Parish.

Thank you, Chair, through you. There's a lot I want to follow up on. I'm going to limit myself to three points, if I may, Chair. So the first is around literacy. This is just my call out into the universe. That I would love to see the Somerville Reads program come back. That was through the library. It was a great way to unify the city. through a collective just we're gonna all read this book loved the focus on literacy citywide so it's been many years since we've had it I would just love to see that I know none of you on the dais have control over that. Okay. The second thing I wanted to bring up was Dr. Carmona, you raised the notion that aggregate test scores do not Tell the full picture. And I'm so glad you raised that.

And one request I would have not right now, but through the rest of of the School Year is to understand how are we developing practices in individual classrooms and schools that can serve as a model for the district. and then how are we using our training and common planning time to implement those models. So I just would love to learn more at some point. And if I may, the last thing I'd like to add to the conversation around test scores is to highlight in the very excellent presentation by Ms. Elegyne, That there were at least a few metrics that did not rely on test scores. There's one slide and I don't know what number it is but With the title, well, it's there. I'll say 2025 accountability results. So toward the end.

It highlights areas for growth of our four-year graduation rate and extended engagement rate and our advanced coursework completion. and so those are areas that we do have you know those don't relate to our test scores and I think I would love to learn more about how we can maybe advance those goals.

Thank you.

I just have a quick question on Ms. Barish. I suspect I already know the answer to this but the MCAS results are comparing since 2019 And then we're also talking about I-Ready and DIBELS and how we're using those. I'm assuming we didn't have I-Ready and DIBELS in 2019, so we can't use that as a comparison.

Yeah, that's right.

I figured, but I just wanted to clarify.

Yeah, no.

Ms. Barish. Thanks. I guess this is really just an observation. Dr. Phillips rightly called out the Urgenciano School and Principal Soto, and I'm pretty sure she's the principal that has been serving in the district in that role for the longest time and Margaret Greene but other than that I think you're probably okay fair fair and Small sample size, let's say. And I just wanted to point out the importance of hiring and retaining excellent people and what we observed at our last meeting and all of the work that has been going into that. So I just wanted to... Just a reflection. Thank you.

Thank you for that. Okay, if there are no further questions, I think we are done with Miss Elgin. Thank you so much. Dr. Carmona?

Yes. Through the chair. Sorry, my microphone is up. Through the chair, our second presentation this evening focuses on special education. And as many of you know, just over 1,000 students about and 19% of our district are enrolled in special education programs. This is a significant portion of our student population and we are deeply committed to continually strengthen these services so that every student receives the support they need to succeed. We are fortunate to have Ildefonso Arellano, our Director of Special Education here tonight to share his report. I also want to take a moment to recognize the families, CPAC members, and others in the community joining us. Your investment in the programs we provide for our students is invaluable, and your voices are an important part of this conversation. As Hilda Fonsa will share, the report card we received from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

outlined various opportunities to address and enhance the 14 different programs we offer our special education students across the district. We openly accept this as positive and constructive feedback and we continue to work alongside DESE to fulfill, if not exceed, expectations set by the state. Throughout the past year, we have made significant strides in how we develop and implement special ed programming. We have done this in part by increasing our staff, Implementing a structured workload for teachers and launching a workgroup charged with reviewing current models and making recommendations for future expansion of our special ed services. I'm also pleased to share that the district will host a special education family listening session hosted by SFLC and our special education department. This will provide families the opportunity to share their perspectives directly with district leaders and school committee members.

It will be the first in a series of listening sessions across departments, and we look forward to these ongoing conversations. As we reflect on both our progress and our areas of growth, I remain confident that we're moving in the right direction, always with the best interests of our students and families at the center. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Director Ildefonso.

Thank you, Dr. Carmona. Good evening, everyone. My name is Ildefonso Arellano. and I'm the director of the special education department. I wanted to thank the school committee for the time to share updates from the special education department. This presentation is also intended to address the concerns raised by the Somerville Special Education Parent Advisory Council, CPAC, in their letter dated August 10, 2025. We value CPAC's partnership and feedback, There's a lot of great work that is happening in our schools and there are areas where we are continuing to grow. Before I begin, I do want to take a moment to recognize the people who make this work possible every day. Our special educators, general educators, Service providers, paraprofessionals, IEP team leaders, office support staff, and department coordinators. The work is complex and often challenging.

but their commitment to our students and our families shows in everything that they do we can move to the next slide I want to talk a little bit about shared responsibility. These tenants were developed in collaboration with the Multilingual Education Department. These shared responsibility tenants affirm the success for students with disabilities and multilingual learners. is a district-wide commitment, and as a district, we are responsible for every student's success, grounded in the belief that all students can learn Realize through inclusive grade-level instruction and guided data for equitable outcomes. This is a slide that we use or that I use here in Somerville to talk about that shared responsibility. We go to the next slide.

And some of this information is just for the school committee to know in terms of the department coordinators and points of contact at our different schools. We are fully staffed with our department coordinators. Our last hire, Jared Whitcomb, was started today. So for the department coordinators, we are fully staffed at each of the schools. We'll go on to the next slide. This slide right here particularly looks at our student population as of 9-29 when I pulled the data from Aspen. It shows that right now we are at 18.5%. of the percentage of students with special education services and then it looks at each of the schools and based on their numbers and you will see that there are some schools who have a greater percentage and that is due to the specialized programs that are housed in those schools. So for example, Winterhill has our program for our students with autism.

The Capuano has a lot of specialized programming there. Kennedy, for example, also has our life skills Our SEEK program, which is our therapeutic program, and our SKIP program as well. And then we have at the bottom our out of district students and our walk-ins. Usually that data is pulled together. but I decided to separate it out. Our walk-in students are students who are in private schools or our home schools who come into our buildings and access services there. And lastly, we have a third of our special education students are duly identified, meaning that they receive special education services and our multilingual as well receiving services through the MLE department. Next slide. And this slide just shows the various special education programs we have at each of our buildings. And I won't go through them, but they're there.

And they're part of that school community and they're embraced. So this is special education accountability data. So for 2025, the special education students made moderate progress towards their targets. and in order to accelerate progress we are meeting with building leaders to conduct a comprehensive review of MCAS. and other district assessments for students with disabilities. And the meetings focus on identifying areas of need, aligning appropriate supports, and engaging in root cause analysis to address the underlying challenges of our students. Next slide. The outcomes from this work will inform the development of targeted action steps which are fully aligned with DESE's recommended practices and directly support the students' work on the IDEA-LEA Special Education Determination of Needs Assessment.

Ensuring that our initiatives reflect DESE guidance and address identified priorities if i can just speak a little bit to the designation and sort of the action steps that the department of education has us do when you are assigned a needs assistance designation There are a series of workshops that you have to attend. What the Department of Education is looking for is for a root cause analysis. Action steps that then you submit to the Department of Ed for approval. All this has to be done by the end of the school year. We don't feel that we can wait that long. That's why we are taking the initiative of already starting conversations with our principals looking at some of this analysis and getting a leg up We want to move along at a quicker pace. Next slide, please.

In terms of the child find, there are legal requirements that the district is obligated to fulfill. We must identify, locate, and evaluate children ages 3 to 21 who we suspect of having a disability. The referral source can come from parents, teachers, community agencies, and there are timelines for compliance. There's a consent that needs to be sent out within five school days, evaluations that need to be completed within 30 school days, and then meetings held and IEPs sent out within 45 school days of parental consent. I am going to highlight getting the IEPs out because there was a recent change in the interpretation of the law whereas before We used to be able to provide parents a summary of the IEP and then we had 10 school days to get the IEP out that May of 2025. The Department of Education reinterpreted that aspect.

The law has pretty much stayed the same, but the way it was interpreted was changed so that now we have five days to get the IEP out in the hands of the parents. So the timeline is shorter. It's something that we had anticipated, something that we made some staffing changes in terms of adding more IEP Team Leaders at our Pre-K-8 because of this new, I don't want to say it's a requirement, just of this new interpretation of the law. and we're still bound by those 45 days so you we have to be able to hold the meeting at the IEP out before the 45 days in order to be in compliance. During annual reviews we do have now five school days only to get the IEPs out. to the parents hands by then. So it's something that we are aware of and that we're working with our staff in order to ensure that we are in compliance. So our commitment from the district is early identification, equitable access, and full parent participation.

And you can see sort of the flow chart in terms of where you start from the referral process all the way to making an eligibility decision and providing services for the student. Next slide. This is just some data that I am going to present regarding some of the referrals that we've gotten. In terms of some of the activities that we're currently doing, we have community screenings. There's three times a year where we are doing community screenings for our three to five year olds. To come in if parents suspect that there's a concern, we can screen the student and from there we can make a determination whether we want to move forward with an evaluation. Sometimes because of such a young age, there might be a developmental range where we might say, well, let's rescreen and determine whether at that point the student has made the necessary gains. At any point during these screenings, the parent can say nope, I want a full evaluation and we would send out a consent.

In addition to that, we have collaboration with early childhood centers and community partners. There's collaboration with our private schools, our parochial school here in Somerville, and there is ongoing monitoring of evaluation timelines. That is a commitment that Just to give you a quick sample of the referral data from last school year, there were 234 referrals submitted to the special education department. This does not reflect an initial evaluation. This does not reflect additional testing or re-evaluation. This is just initials. and these were submitted by staff, by parents, by guardians, by our early intervention agencies and then outside agencies such as DCF. So out of the 234, 75% were parent referrals or initiated Not... I'm going to go into the data a little bit more.

Out of the 75%, 56.3 were found eligible and the 46.6 were found ineligible for services based on the In terms of the schools, which only ranged about 20%, we had just under 80% of those referrals, qualifying for special education, and just shy of 20% being ineligible. Another data point that we are tracking is our referrals compliance with mandated timelines. When we looked at the numbers, there was 91.2% of the referrals that were completed or that were We are aiming for 100%. We want to be able to have The timeline's completed. IEP sent out if appropriate. This includes with consents as well. So it is an area that we are continuing to monitor. Next slide, please.

In terms of strengthening our programmatic design, At the end of last school year, we did request additional staff for this school year. So over at Winterhill and East, we did acknowledge the fact that there were staffing needs there where we provided We provided additional support as part of the budget collaboratives. In addition, there was a new AIME classroom that was added over at Capuano to support an increased enrollment of our students with Autism, and in addition there were two new inclusion co-teachers who were hired this year to advance our inclusive practices and co-teaching initiatives. We support the goals of the current working group that I'll talk a little bit more about. We went to a workload based, I shouldn't have put workload and I apologize for that, but we moved more to a weighted caseload staffing model.

And so this was in alignment with the new collective bargaining that was referenced earlier. with the agreement with the SEU where the district is now using a weighted workload model to ensure that we're accurately assessing and responding to staffing needs based on IEP service requirements of students. and what we have seen is that since the beginning of the school year we have identified three positions where we needed to We needed to request additional support in certain buildings. There was the adjustment counselor over at Winter Hill. There was an additional resource room teacher that we identified for Argenziano and Kennedy. And just recently, we did identify I hope that as we continue to monitor, we are responding to the needs.

If there's an increase in terms of that weighted caseload, we are able to then make those requests in order to get the staffing that is needed. Next slide. Just to touch base in terms of the inclusive practices and co-teaching work group as was referenced earlier, EAST, at East Somerville and Winter Hill. We have two models currently in place where there are two additional special educators at each of the, One at each of the buildings to support inclusive practices where they are doing co-teaching with their general education counterparts. In addition to that, we kicked off our working group meeting at the end of September, where our goal is to review current models, define co-teaching,

Expectations, identify professional development needs, analyze data from the different sites of our co-teaching models and provide recommendations for future expansion. Next slide. And at this point, I'm going to turn this over to my assistant director, Marissa McDonald, who'll talk a little bit more about our professional development.

Good evening, school committee members. As Ildefonso stated, I'm Marissa MacDonald. I'm the Assistant Director of Special Education here in Somerville. I'm happy to be here with you tonight to share some of the ways Special Education Department is working to support both students and staff across the district these efforts are rooted in evidence-based practices targeted professional development and the belief that all students can succeed when provided the right tools and support So as you'll see on this slide, we're continuing to build strong instructional systems for students with disabilities. In the next few slides, we'll highlight this. So first, we've implemented the Sonde system. A multi-sensory evidence-based literacy program which provides explicit and systematic instruction to help build foundational reading skills. It is tailored to meet diverse needs of students and ensure access to high quality reading instruction.

We are also expanding staff capacity through crisis prevention intervention training, Offering trauma-informed strategies for de-escalation, including both verbal and nonviolent crisis training. Additionally, we will be introducing Q-interactive which streamlines how we assess students both cognitively and academically. It allows for more efficient real-time data collection and helps target instruction and intervention. If we can move to the next slide. Hyde. Oh, I don't know if it's there. OK. Not that one. I just want to make sure. This one. Back one. Yeah. There we go.

We know paraprofessionals are vital partners in supporting students with disabilities, so we're launching a five-session professional development We have a series over the course of the school year for them, topics to include the difference between reinforcing and teaching, building strong relationships, fostering regulation, and tracking student progress using data. We're also developing a new district-wide PD called What's So Special About Special Education. And this is designed for all educators and administrators. It focuses on foundational knowledge covering the law including IDEA, state regulations, child find, the evaluation process, IEP development, specially designed instruction, and inclusive evidence-based practices. The goal is to deepen the understanding of how to implement inclusive, compliant, and impactful practices for students with disabilities. Next slide.

and we're also working to ensure that multilingual learners with disabilities receive services that reflect their unique language and learning needs We've offered the referral to results professional development last spring as well as this past summer and we are going to be offering it again this coming spring. This professional development is designed to guide educators through the process of referring, evaluating, and determining eligibility for multilingual learners with suspected disabilities. Additionally, we dive into evidence-based practices to support both IEP goals and language development. It's important to note that that professional development was designed in collaboration with the MLE department. And finally, we're developing an asynchronous PD modules focused on high leverage practices such as behavior support, strong academic instruction, and universal design for learning. to help staff improve day-to-day practices and tiered instruction for students with disabilities across the district.

And next slide. and I'm really excited to talk about this. So ESY, our extended school year. So I wanna take a moment to highlight a particularly exciting development, which was expanding our ESY model for academic services this past summer. Historically, ESY services were primarily delivered through short walk-ins, academic sessions. However, we acknowledge that this model and format was difficult for families to take advantage of. In response, we expanded our model this past summer and offered a more structured half-day program. Students received targeted instruction in reading, math, and writing with embedded executive functioning support. 45 minutes for each subject, five days a week for four weeks. And we were able to launch three classrooms serving approximately 30 students who had been found eligible for ESY. Based on this success, we are excited to continue this model for the following summer.

So finally I do want to talk about our partnership with the CPAC. As it was mentioned earlier, we are part of the at Advancing Parent Professional Leadership and Education, the Apple Institute. We have our first meeting tomorrow from 10 to 12. So we're very excited to participate in this program alongside CPAC and continuing strengthening our partnership with them. I also wanted to highlight a couple of things. Tomorrow also at 7 p.m. there is a basic rights workshop. There was a... Email that was sent out to families. There's information on the CPAC website. There's information on the Somerville website for that basic rights workshop. And also we will be having a virtual meet and greet on Thursday, October 9th. where families have the opportunity to meet the IEP team leaders or department coordinators at their schools. And information about this event is going out to families later on.

So we're very excited to continue our work with the CPAC. Next slide. I think that's the last one. And thank you very much for the opportunity to give this update.

Thank you for that presentation. I'm sure there will be questions, comments from my colleagues. As everyone ponders that, I will start with myself. If memory serves, 60 out of district placements is fewer than we've had in the past, or am I remembering incorrectly? Is that sort of on par with what we...

That number has always ranged. There's always been less than 70 students out of district. This is the lowest number that we've had. We had a few students who either aged out or graduated. from our out-of-district programming, so it is relatively low.

And you may not know this off the top of your head, but do you have any sense of how that number compares to similarly sized districts in terms of how many students we're sending out of district?

I don't have the number off the top of my head, but what I can say is that, and I can never speak highly enough of our Next Way Full Circle program, which is our therapeutic middle school and high school which really acts almost as an out of district program for our most vulnerable students and I believe that it's over 80 students there that if we did not have that type of programming we would be adding likely all those students in terms of In terms of our added district programming. So I think because we have that, we're better able to keep our students in our community and educate them here. But school districts with similar profiles as ours may not have that programming where their numbers go up. But I'm more than happy to get that information for you to see what it looks like.

That would be helpful just to have a sense of how we compare. Thank you. Do I have Dr. Phillips and then Mr. Pitone?

Thanks. Through you, Chair. I really appreciate this presentation and I really appreciate everything that you and your team are doing. Thank you so much. Out in the community, I am hearing a lot of talk about special education from my colleagues on city council, from my constituents, and I'm wondering, doesn't have to be today, but at some future time, could we get some Just some data on things like missed services, how many kids have had their services missed and are not made up, because my understanding is we have to make it up. compliance I know we talked a lot about compliance last year and my understanding is that to the extent we were out of compliance it was with our own teachers contract but I'd love to know any more data saying how we're in compliance how we're out of compliance

Those are the main ones that I'm thinking of. I just would love to be able to say to the community, here's the facts that the special education department has given me and let me share them with you. Thanks.

Absolutely. Mr. Biton.

Thank you, Chair, through you. Mr. Arellano, thank you so much for this presentation. Really helpful. I also want to extend thanks to the CPAC I firmly believe that we can't address problems that we don't look squarely at. So to the extent the data they provided and the data you provided Thank you. I wanted to hear a little more about teacher referrals. I hear a lot about parent referrals in the community.

I don't hear as much about teacher referrals and I'm very curious to understand what that process looks like. What happens when a teacher refers a child for evaluation? How does that communication happen? Is there some kind of form? Is it an email? Is it just a conversation with the principal? What does that look like?

I think that the referral from teachers can take many different forms. There are obviously our child study teams and our SST teams, which are our social study teams that look at more on the social emotional side. But typically if there's a concern from a teacher where a student is not making progress or not meeting certain expectations in the classroom is brought up through one of these two teams. At that point, they're looking at the information. They're looking at what interventions, how the student is responding to the Tier 1 interventions that the teacher has in place. They may be putting some Tier 2 interventions in place. And then at that point, they're looking over time, a six to eight week period typically, to see whether or not the student is making progress. At that point, if the student is making progress with that intervention, great.

If not, then there has to be a discussion about whether or not there is something else going on with the student that is prohibiting them from making progress. So is there an area of disability? So that's one avenue. There are other times where, for example, there might be a student, even the teacher is looking and based on their experience and based on their ability to They're like, no, there's something more going on. They may bring that up also to CST and say, well, this may be a referral that we kind of move up because I am really suspecting that there is more going on here than maybe tier two interventions can provide. So that's another avenue that can happen. There's also teachers. are speaking with parents constantly in terms of their child's progress and it may be something that through the discussion a referral may come in through the parent's side.

But that's typically the way it works.

Ms. Barish.

Thank you. Through you, I'll echo my colleague's gratitude for the presentation and for the data that you've provided us with. Long lines that Dr. Phillips was talking about what additional data might be helpful. You mentioned that, I think, 91% of our IEPs were delivered within that 45-day required window. I'm curious about Sort of what the average one is taking? Are they all 42, 43, 44 days? Or is there a broad range? I don't need that answer now. It's just another thing that I was thinking about. and another sort of data point Ms. MacDonald mentioned that you know she talked about the the

and I'm just curious you know you said that it was successful but I'm curious about sort of whether participation increased attendance increased sort of what the The benchmarks were that you were looking at.

I'm happy to provide you that information. I know that it was the first year of our model, and while we said it was successful, I'm sure that parents didn't We do have to do a lot more work in terms of getting that message out to parents for students who do qualify for extended school year. The other piece that is part of my goals for this year and moving forward is figuring out how to partner with for example Parks and Recreation to provide that second half because most parents are looking for A full day program, right? So we were able to offer three hours of required instruction based on their IEP needs. However, meeting or supplementing that time with like for example Parks and Rec I think it's going to be it's just going to enhance and and and have our parents access that more so it is something that we are working towards

Awesome.

Are there more questions, Ms. Patel? Thank you for the presentation. You shared a lot of encouraging things. I particularly was compelled by this effort that's being made to really Analyze and track caseloads like that's something that clearly I think everybody here is nodding their heads and was missing and that really hopefully will identify needs sooner. and doing the training with the CPAC the Apple training that's exciting to hear about I'm gonna just echo the general feeling of like there feels like there needs to be a little more transparency around the data around I don't know if this is an opportunity, I don't know the timing for this, but to have a little bit more of a dashboard or something that we can make more public to families to

increase confidence in the work that we're doing and seeing that the investments that we're making are creating more outcomes so these are related to a lot of the questions I think that everyone flagged but I'm kind of trying to look at the big picture I am curious and you probably don't have an answer for this and maybe this is a conversation that I would have offline or with the CPAC but like what is a model of effective CPAC collaboration? Clearly there's some frustration. I know in my heart of hearts that everybody in the district wants to do well. I never question that. But there's some kind of disconnect in terms of the experience that we had last year or the past few years and what the CPAC expects so hopefully the apple work will help build bridges but I think that's something helpful to make a little more I'm sure there's some districts that maybe are doing it better than we're doing it and having a model to work to. I apologize.

There's so many things that you guys brought up, so it's a lot to take in. Yeah I'm just really curious over the next year what kind of data points that can point to you know it's great to know things like how many How many evaluations we turn around and all those things are great, but are we going to move ourselves into a place where maybe we're having a way to evaluate the quality of our IEPs? I know this is probably more longer term, but I'm excited to think about ways that We can continue to move the needle beyond sort of operational monitoring into quality, if that makes sense. And obviously academics are a huge one. but that that you know there's always those points along the process where we can say hey you know we're getting great feedback from our special development special ed teachers on this PD and it's really been a really positive So things like that that I look forward to hearing more about.

Thank you for the feedback. One of the things that we are doing this year because we've invested money in our Sande system, which is our reading intervention, we are going to be looking at students. who are getting that type of intervention and looking at how much progress they are making, for example, in their I-Ready data. We want to be able to see the effectiveness of that program. also Sande is also being used by our multilingual department as well to provide some intervention because it is a pro an evidence-based program that also works for our MLEs so it is um again Something that we're trying to do in collaboration with that department. But yes, I agree that we need to look a little bit more in terms of the effectiveness of our programming, the effectiveness of our professional development. and the intervention systems that we use in special education.

And Ms. Barish and then Mr. Buton.

This is a, I guess, maybe not nitpicky, but I think it's a question I think you can answer probably right now. I'm just curious about how the walk-in services works. Is there a person who provides all of the walk-ins with whatever service it is they're qualified to provide? Does that make sense? Or are they spread across the district? Just depending on where they live or where they attend private school.

So it is based on their home school district. So if you live in the Kennedy area, then that is where you would receive your home school services.

Mr. Biton.

Thank you, Chair, through you. I wanted to follow up on Mr. Arellano. The answer you gave to Ms. Pitone's question, and you spoke about evaluating programs and how they're working. I'm sorry, I forget the exact terms you used. It reminded me of a comment we received at the beginning of this meeting tonight around Establishing both a data-driven plan, which I think you've talked about, but also clear goals and deadlines. And so one thing, and I think it was a great comment, and I would encourage you and the district leadership to Consider establishing what is a successful program

and many more. What is the metric that says, yes, this is working? Thanks.

Did you want to respond? Oh, the one piece that... I'm just trying to make sure I word this correctly. We provide individualized educational programs, right? We use evidence-based interventions for our students. Everyone has a unique learning profile. So I'm happy to provide and say we want to be able to see our special education students gain X amount, understanding that our students are vastly different. We want to make sure that we are also focusing on the individual because that is what special education is. But I do appreciate the fact that we do have to have certain markers that we want to measure our students and have them be successful.

Just a quick question and then Ms. Barish. Do you have a sense of the timeline for the group that's looking at the inclusion model?

So the way the MOA was written is that we would take this year and then I'm going to try to do the best to remember. I believe by May we have to make final recommendations. and then in due provide a report to both the superintendent and the president of the SEU with our very specific recommendations. To be honest with you when I did speak with the working group I told them we're going to have to push that up because budget season starts early so we want to be able to Make some recommendations if there is going to be some kind of budgetary impact. So while we have those deadlines, to me it's more of a March type of having some preliminary recommendations from the team.

Great, thank you. Ms. Barish? First, thank you. I'm really glad to hear that because when you said June, I was like, how are we going to fund things at that point? So that's wonderful to hear. Thank you. I just had a thought about... Accessibility of some of the things that you've talked about tonight like Child Find and the Apple Institute. I noticed that they're all during working hours, which I know is More practical from a staffing standpoint, but from a student and parent service standpoint, it may be really hard for parents to get their kids Here during those hours or to attend the Apple Institute during those hours so one I was wondering if the Apple Institute session will be recorded and something that people can sort of

I was wondering if there's any possibility of having a child find screening on a weekend or an evening or even coupled with the in-person enrollment sessions that are offered or open house sessions something where there's some So that we're capturing people when they are already here or providing access at a time when it might be easier for people to get here. It's just something to think about. If there's any way we can support those off hours times, whether it be through the way we write contracts or the way we fund things, please let us know.

Thank you.

Dr. Ackman. Thank you. Through the chair, I'm curious how you're capturing Incoming students, like effectively pre-K and kindergartners, and sort of how... How they're assessed, how quickly they're assessed, and how quickly they're provided with services. More so not kids coming out of Capuano, but kids coming in new to the district. I know there's like... A school that has found a particular challenge with this year's kindergarten class and like high levels of need and I know there's no or I surmise there's no way to anticipate that you know please let me know if I'm wrong but I'm sort of curious

Again, if this goal is to get services as early as possible, you know in order to forestall later challenges but also just like to help kids acclimate and get what they need to learn like you know with kids who are new to the district in pre-k or k uh you know i would love to know how like what percent come in Brandnew. I assume it's quite a bit. And then of those, how quickly are we getting them assessed? and then how quickly are we providing them with services? I know it's a multi-part question. Does it all make sense? Was that coherent? It's getting late.

I can hopefully help answer. So for our pre-K students, especially those who are coming out of early intervention, they have to be assessed. and recommendations have to be made if they qualify before their third birthday. So what sometimes ends up happening is that we will have, for example, a December birthday The parent, for some reason, is just giving us the information and then we're under that timeline to assess the student before they turn three in order to ensure that services are in place if they qualify. So that's one piece for our EI students who are transitioning potentially into pre-K. For our other students, for our incoming students, we do have kindergarten screenings. We have pre-K screenings. That's part of our child find process as well. So we do the SC. which is for our kindergarteners.

We do the PELI which is for our preschool students and that is meant to help identify students who may need to go through the evaluation process. Other than the students who are aging into special education, we still have to follow the timelines in terms of sending out a consent. Once the consent is received, it's those 30 days to complete the assessment and then the additional 15 days to have the median. If the student qualifies, then send out that IEP. Yeah, I think I had everything.

Thank you to the chair. The only other thing I'll add, and I know that we do have some cases in classrooms where there are needs and it's They're pre-K or K, is that we do have additional supports outside of special education. So I'm thinking about the team that Liz Doncaster, Director Liz Doncaster brought from Student Services to support. We have BCBAs in the classroom supporting and other service providers supporting and being thought partners to our educators. I was on the phone earlier today to support a classroom and be a thought partner, so not just under the umbrella of special education, but in constant collaboration to support in those cases as well.

Mr. Green.

As was mentioned earlier and again during the presentation, we are currently piloting an inclusion model at two of our schools with the hope to learn and eventually scale from that. And so I would love it if Perhaps sometime around midterm, those actually teachers could come in and share some of their initial experiences and thoughts. Because we are, Committing to spending a lot of money over the next however many years to move to where we want to be, but to require fairly massive increase in staffing. So we have an obligation to make sure we do it right. And so I want to show we are hearing certainly quantitative data.

but also the quality of experience because you know we know from our experience with common planning time that the details matter and there's usually a good period of just tweaking the very boring unsexy details to making any of these grand visions work. And yeah, absolutely, I want a grand vision. I'm learning how to move towards a full inclusion model. But the thing I've learned over time is It's not the grand visions. It's the blocking and tackling every day. So I'd really love to make sure halfway through year one we're getting some of that gone-around qualitative data.

May I just comment real quick? One of the things that I did, and this was throughout my presentation when I was talking about the co-teaching model, is that I moved the word pilot from my vocabulary because vocabulary Because pilot typically implies that you may move forward with it, you may not. That is not the vision of the special education department. I know that that was what was agreed upon. But we are committed to expand our inclusive practices, to expand our co-teaching models. We know that students are successful and they're able to gain skills when they're learning with their peers. Yes, they still require small group support as needed, but we know that the data shows that students are more successful when they're educated in the general education classroom. So I... Just wanted to highlight that piece. Do you want to have a follow up?

I just want to thank you for saying that, actually. Actually, can I bring you to work tomorrow and you can say that in the foundation? Because we have this tendency to call things pilots as we just slip them in, even when we know full well that we're trying to. So I appreciate you stating what many people already know but we never actually met. Thank you.

Mr. Biton, do you have a follow-up or a new question?

Thank You chair through you I want to Second, Mr. Green's excellent point just there around wanting to hear from educators. And I would also, in the spirit of What we heard before, nothing about us without us. Like to continue to hear from the CPAC in those same conversations. I think this is all very valuable and we're going to do this in partnership. So I think it's important that we continue to work together and learn together. Thanks.

Dr. Ackman. Thank you. Through the chair, to first follow up on what my colleague Mr. Pitone said, We'd love to hear from the CPAC. I know the data that they have is very heavy from a couple schools, so I do hope that, you know, As we've seen, there are students on IEPs at every single school, so I look forward to a broad sample of families. To your point about outcomes and outcomes for students who are educated with peers, my understanding is of the previous administration, there was a pretty heavy effort to bring our students who had been in out-of-district placements back in, and the current administration is working very hard to maintain that. You're working to maintain that. It's something that I celebrate.

but to that point my understanding is we now should have pandemic being the largest asterisk ever like years of potential long-term data on student outcomes and students who have been in the district. And I guess this is, like a request to the district and to Ms. Elegine like you know I know that there are ways of sort of tracking long-term outcome data now through the department of ed at least with like if students attend state schools, if students attend community colleges, if they go into job training programs. And I'm not sure if we have it, Going back to when students were in out-of-district placements, but I would love to actually look at our data and make sure that that's not just

What research says is best practice and doesn't seem to be working for our students. I'd like to, you know, sort of see that if possible as we're, especially as Ms. Pitone said, a dashboard, like to me, You know, this is me putting it on Miss Elejean's amazing skill set. I feel like she could envision showing these long-term outcomes and I think it would just be be really cool and an interesting way to show you know how making sure that our students are educated with their peers in our schools and the effort that it takes that that showing the What the outcomes look like.

If I may comment, the Department of Education actually does track some of that information for us. It's actually one of the indicators. in the LEA determination. And there's two indicators that they measure. One's early childhood and then post-secondary. and I can't remember which number is which, but I can definitely get you that information. But essentially we send notification to parents or to students who have either graduated and that's either through high school, through our audit district students as well. So there's certain requirements that we have to do as part of this indicator. to try to understand what is it that the student did post-secondary. So did they go to a two-year college? Did they go to a four-year college? So all that information, The Department of Ed does require the Special Ed Department to track, so I will try to obtain that information and provide it here for everyone.

Because it is a measure that's part of our LEA determination.

Missouri.

First, as an aside to Dr. Ackman, there are actually a group of organizations, including my own, that is working to push the legislature to do more of that. Because right now the tracking law exists, it's pretty bare bones. So I've had to talk to people who are interested in that issue offline. There's a great group called Friends of Longitudinal Data that is working very hard to improve our data systems for system tracking in Massachusetts. And, I want to start the process of looking forward to next year's budget. As was mentioned earlier, we're starting to talk about next year's budget because We are going to be handing over to the reality to next year's city government, whoever may be serving those roles, the reality that if we're not looking

Our budget numbers start at probably 6-7% just to keep doing what we're doing. And that is worrisome because I think everyone needs to recognize that there's no universe with the financial situation of this city. We better come next June than it is now. So the city will have to make some hard choices. If you believe, like I do, the hard choices they need to make are cut other things to fund education, we need to start saying that to people now. So because it is true that we have made real investments in the last several years, and it's real true that if we want to get to where we're going, we have to continue to make real investments. and so I'm saying this because I think again people need to start saying this now that like if We just don't expect there's some federal cuts if the state economy slows because they've already ruled out raising new taxes in the state.

There's only so much the city can do to provide new revenue. So this is going to be a priority we need to start telling our officials now. that we're going to need to really invest if that's what we value in the priority of the city.

Okay. Did you want to respond?

No, no. Thank you.

Alright, are there any further questions for Ildefonso for now? Alright, seeing none, thank you again for being here.

Thank you all very much.

So thank you, Director Arellano and Assistant Director McDonald. Thank you. Really appreciate your coming here tonight to support the work. So before I close, one more note on special education. This Thursday morning, October 9, we will offer the first of this year's Child Findings Screenings. These are free for Somerville families with children ages 3 to 5 who aren't enrolled yet in our schools. For those who have a little one getting ready for preschool or kindergarten and you have noticed they might be developing skills a bit differently, Or if you just want to learn more about special education services, this is a great chance to connect with us. There will be three screenings throughout the year. The first one will begin at 8 30 a.m. on Thursday at Capuano Early Childhood Center.

You can see the special education page on our SPS website for registration information or contact our special ed team for more assistance. And finally, I just wanted to share with the community that the culinary part of the high school will be open on Thursday. I yeah so the information should be posted on the website but uh just the general the gist of it is that it will be open uh 11 to 12 15 and so if you can join us that'll be great um that's the same for the community so We will see how we can expand those services further down the line.

And just quickly, if somebody wants to go to the restaurant, do they go to the front door of the high school and ring the doorbell? How do they get there?

So I don't have all the details. Asking for a friend. I don't have all the details, but I will gather as much information as I can from you.

Okay, thank you. Ms. Pitone? Through the chair, is it just this Thursday or every Thursday?

The idea is every Thursday. Okay. But just this Thursday will be the first Thursday of the season.

Thank you. Okay? And also just quickly, since you mentioned the first child find being on Thursday and we just had the presentation, could you speak a little bit about how the district does outreach in general for the child find? Maybe we should have asked.

I know, Alfonso just left. Jess, do you know any specific details on that?

Well, I think it's certainly publicized through our newsletters and otherwise through I think there is also signage and things of that sort, but I think Ildefonso will know the more detailed answer.

All I can tell you is that I know SFLC has been involved in the process because they have the keys to unlocking some of those communication services. I don't have the specific details of that, but I definitely I'm interested now that you've mentioned. I know that I spoke to SFLC to make sure that our practices in special ed get embedded with the know-how of the group.

And once you're going to talk to the SFLC about it, it'd be great to hear about Ms. Barish's suggestions about could it be done on a Saturday or any of those. Thank you. All right. Does that conclude your report? That brings us to a report of subcommittees. I will entertain a motion.

I move to accept the report of the Rules Management Subcommittee meeting for September 25th, 2025.

I have a motion by Ms. Barish, seconded by Dr. Ackman. If there is no discussion, yes, Ms. Barish, there is some discussion.

Yeah, I just wanted to make sure that my colleagues are aware we are hopefully meeting on October 20th. Great. And at that meeting, we will be considering voting out some sections of the policy manual review to this body. it's a lot so I'm just giving you a heads up now that like hopefully those will be voted out of subcommittee on October 20th and then I will get those to Erica ASAP sorry Ms. Garcia ASAP so that they can get into a packet and into your hands so that you will have time to review them before we discuss them here. So I just wanted to give you a heads up that the packet may be a little thicker for that meeting than you're used to.

To that point, as someone who deeply trusts and appreciates the judgment of the chair of the Rules Subcommittee, if there are anecdotal notes or some sort of memo that you would like to or willing to provide like with additional you know like your take your feedback notes from the subcommittee um Any of that I would say is a welcome crib sheet. And if not, you can tell me something.

I mean the easiest place to start is just the subcommittee notes because I've been trying to sort of Just a brief synopsis of what's discussed. I think it's pretty obvious which ones there was actual discussion about and which ones it was just this is what's recommended and that's great. So that's a place to start but I can sort of Steele, Steele, Steele, Steele.

Thank you so much for that. If there's nothing further, all in favor? All opposed? Motion carries. That brings us to the presentation to the CAG, which we are bringing up again after our last meeting.

So at this point, I would just, because I apparently have a couple weeks now, if you want to give me your thoughts in writing or... I'm happy to hear people's thoughts. I think I laid out the problem last meeting so I'm not going to repeat myself. It's late and we did this week ago. So if people have things to add. I'm all ears.

And when is the next CAG meeting?

It is late. It would normally be next Monday, but since next Monday's a holiday, it is going to be instead... Sorry, my calendar is being difficult. The last Monday of October, whatever.

May I ask a question? So one of the things I've noticed in the like and forgive me if we talked about this last time and I was delirious and don't remember but I'm gonna refer to it as the like Venn diagram of you know two schools versus one school there is a size overlap So, you know, if we suggested a 650 person school, like let's just say, as I look at the PowerPoint, That could potentially be like two buildings combined or one. Is that correct?

like does that make sense it makes sense and it's something i've been thinking about okay um the city i think wisely but that's just my personal opinion got the got the It must be a process to agree to 250 more seats just off the top of things. So that's why we have 650. So in theory, yes, we could say 650 and still consolidate. or, and I never had the answer, I still don't have the answer to, does 950 require us to, although my short either process, I'm not sure how they could, but. I am neither a lawyer nor a planner, so I could be just reading that wrong. But I think, ultimately speaking, that's a question we would have to decide.

Ms. Barish? I just want to point out that those calculations would not based on current numbers would not accommodate rising fifth graders from the Brown School. So we would have a capacity issue in the upper grades potentially I mean obviously we don't know exactly what enrollment will do but just something to keep in mind that when we talk about the number of Brown School students we have to think about people leaving fifth grade and what that does to the school capacity.

Ms. Pitone? Through the chair. I apologize, I missed the frame. Do you want to? Okay, I missed the framing. Is this just we're having a conversation? We're just continuing a conversation from last week.

Okay.

I had someone um through you I had someone email me and they asked me what my position was on a single school or combined school and they emailed me several weeks ago and I couldn't even answer them because it's so complicated Now, I've written something and I'm going to share it, but it was really helpful and also in context of something Dr. Phillips said which is like what are these sort of characteristics that you might be looking at when you're trying to weigh pros and cons so like things like equity and access I mean this is our Primary value as a district is what's going to be the most equitable and how we're going to increase access for our students. Safety for students and staff. Paramount. That comes up all the time.

making sure from a responsibility standpoint we are we have an adequate number of seats what you guys were just talking to is that we have to have enough spaces for our students Cost. That has to be one of our responsibilities and sort of the kind of the natural Extension for myself is outcomes like how are these choices going to affect our outcomes in theory because obviously people are making assumptions and doing research and I was very appreciative I went back and looked at the presentation that this district did in June about outcomes and you know they talked about diversity and specialized programming and saying basically if we increase the diversity it's probably going to improve our outcomes I'm like okay right now we have two different schools that have very different levels of diversity one is Thank you.

The AIM program, you still have a very high level of high needs, low income, a lot of complexity, special education, all that stuff. as opposed to the other school which we have which has relatively to the district lower of that of those data points around High needs students, special education, pretty much every, I wrote them down, but like every characteristic on the block. These are two, one is highly diverse and one is not as diverse. Granted, if you compare the Brown School to any school out In the universe, it'll probably seem pretty diverse, but for Somerville itself, it's very different. So that was one aspect. Distance from school the net for that was you know everybody wants to be 10 steps closer they want to be a half a mile closer to their school but The opinion of the district was it wasn't really significant because whether it was at Trum or at Winter Hill, there's still going to be options for people. School size.

That was the one that was kind of, you know, you know at 700 which is we're saying 675 that's a place where this district feels comfortable that there there's not going to be any negative outcomes if the school is larger it could be flat there could be some reduction in outcomes but but something that one was one that maybe put a little flag for And then facility features. Now we all know that we have one school that does not offer a cafeteria, does not offer a robust outdoor space, does not offer a gymnasium. you know we've been put in the position to basically say well those families opt into that and I respect that and I understand that and at some points we have to decide how important I guess an item that I didn't put on my list was flexibility and parent choice Do we want to make our choices based on flexibility and parent choice? Is that the most important thing to us as a district and as a community?

And I want to be incredibly clear. People have chosen these schools and they're passionate about their schools and they're passionate about their school communities and I do not, it makes me emotional because I've been to a school that made a significant programmatic change and it was incredibly hard and it broke communities. Absolutely. When the Healy School had the Choice Program, didn't have the Choice Program, I know people are bored of hearing about it, but I want to make sure people understand that I get it. I was in that community. Both of my kids were there. People lost friends over it. People left the district. It was awful. Now, if I look at it today and say, you know what? I think net what's been better for our district is having an integrated school. I will say 100%. I think that's better for the district. Was it better for individual families? Probably not. There were many families that were really unhappy and disappointed. Was it net better for that district? Yes. So I give kudos to that school committee. It was super hard. Like I said, I talked to some school committee, said people just dump them.

Never friends ever again over this decision. I just want to make sure that I'm taking this opportunity to sort of put all this out there. So I spent time looking at all of the data. And one of the things that was very personally impactful for myself is that talking to educators at the Winter Hill and them explaining to me that currently the way the Winter Hill is designed, it only has two strands per grade, they are limited in the amount of inclusion they can do. There's only so many students they can put in those classrooms because In an inclusion model, often those students have to be supported or there needs to be a second teacher. You can't put 12 students that are in the AIM program into a classroom, and they're only going to have one, two classrooms per grade. that really sort of spoke to me individually and saying you know what right now we're not doing the best we can do by our students and that there could be possibly advantage of having a larger school because we've decided as a district to have a single program for our students on the autism spectrum.

So I just wanted to flag that because that was something really moving to me. The other things that I feel like I can't ignore, and I know nobody wants to really talk about this, is cost. and I know that the city has done a really good job of putting a lot of data out there and nobody wants to say that we're making a decision based on cost but If we make a combined school, and I just did a little math and it's probably the wrong math, but you know, We could have a school that's $210,000 per seat or $220,000 per seat if we put it at Trump or if we put it at... at Winter Hill, current location at Sycamore Street. If we build just at Winter Hill, it's going to be $247 per seat. And if we add redoing the round, that's another $376,000 per seat for those 250 seats.

and I think that it's something that we cannot ignore because for my opinion if we just choose as a city to have two schools which That's a choice. I would be hard pressed not to do something about the Brown. There's too much risk in that building. We are not providing our kids the best work environment. and there's going to be a lot of trade-offs I mean you look at the design we're going to take a playground that is already very small and make it I think about a third of the size and you know if people are going to go to the ball and say we have to have two schools we have to have two schools I'm going to be like we have to do something around and make it different so if people want that we're going to have to absorb a much greater cost and that that is something that we have to resolve with as a districts and as a school community so i apologize i'm probably rambling these are all things that you've heard and all things you know but it just felt like i hadn't had the opportunity to sort of

I express all my concerns and when someone says to me what's your position I don't have a position I have opinions I have facts I have thoughts and I really tried to focus on the thoughts and I think that We've all been very hesitant to say how we feel. And I'd like the community to say, well, how do we feel about it? How do we feel about, you know, The equity situation that we have two schools that have two very different populations. How do we feel about having a school that is not able to achieve its goals around inclusion because it's not large enough? and how do we feel about the costs associated with all of this so I know that there could be a short-term cost that hurts communities and again I felt it and it's awful and it's horrible but we have to be here to think about a long-term cost and I hope that and benefit and I hope that we can give that input to the CAG as they muddle for this decision and I know the CAG is a lot more data than we have and I am so thankful

of the work that they're doing and I wish everybody well in this process and just wanted to get that all out there.

Wow, thank you so much for that, Laura. Yep, Ms. Barish.

Thanks to Ms. Pitone for sort of encapsulating a lot of I think what I've been thinking and feeling. and I just want to add you mentioned cafeteria and gymnasium but elevator like it's not an accessible building there are parents who can't go to meetings there There are students who can't attend the school, right? There are educators who can't work there. So that's not something that I think we can ignore. I guess to your point of we can't just leave the building alone if we were not combining them. Additionally, to your point about the outdoor space, It would be a greatly reduced outdoor space for students, but also for the neighborhood.

And that truly is a magnet on weekends after school, et cetera, in a city that obviously is Very low on outdoor space. or usable community outdoor space. I also, I just wanted to clarify, I mentioned the way I hope people are remembering the numbers about What would it mean, what it would mean to combine the Brown School and the Runner Hill School and remembering that there are fifth graders who currently are spread across the district in sixth grade. I want to be clear that I don't I don't think it's a good idea to find a solution that maintains the current practice of in fifth grade everyone has to figure out or the district has to figure out where all these kids are going.

We've been hearing for families for decades. I think the district as well probably would prefer not to have that process. I imagine that the enrollment office would like to not I have to do that every year. I don't want to put words in their mouths, obviously, but I just want to like, I can't imagine perpetuating that system if we have this opportunity to no longer do that.

So I just want to clarify in terms of numbers, there would be enough room to account for that in a 925-person school.

Yes, and even if we kept the two schools separate, I guess what I'm advocating for is those fifth graders from the Brown School should be able to go to the Winter Hills School or Whatever that school is called. I hope it would be called the Winter Hill School. they should be able to go to that school every year all of them so that 650 I think would accommodate that but I just wanted to be clear that like I see this is an opportunity to build a solution into the district for a problem that has been frustrating people for a long time. As long as you've been in school? As long as we've not had middle schools. Okay, Mr. Biton.

Through you, Chair. To that point, this is probably the only opportunity for us to think about building a centralized middle school. That we will have in the next couple decades. It's a central location. It could solve the programming problem and open up seats at all of our elementary level schools so i do think that's something that needs to be on the table we need to be thinking about I also just want to talk a little bit about transportation in the city. Raising a family in Somerville is hard. It's hard. It's hard to get around. It's hard to

Access Services sometimes and I think we just we do need to be mindful about that about how the choices we make impact The more we consolidate schools, I worry that it may It may be harder for families and I think that matters and we see every year families leave to go to suburbs and that is painful too, right? We talk about broken relationships and Obviously the cost of living in Somerville increases every year. And this is just another factor I think that pushes people out.

I worry about how consolidation of our schools might play into that and make it harder to sustainably you know we're for good measure we're making it harder to drive across Somerville I think Lowering speed limits, constraining traffic, these are all good things for safety. They also make it harder, take longer to get across town.

I also just want to quickly point out we were talking about affordability in Somerville. We are going to be asking voters to significantly increase their taxes for this and whether we did that for one school or two schools would be significantly more money that we would be asking taxpayers to bear the burden up. So just another point about making Somerville less affordable. Thank you. Ms. Barish and then Dr. Phillips.

I just was hoping that Mr. Biton might expand upon what he was thinking about this is our only opportunity to build or to think about building a middle school. I'm just curious, are you suggesting that The new building would be a middle school and we would pull grades something to eight out of all of the elementary schools and maybe Add a strand to each of those schools in order to accommodate the students who would have been going to the Winter Hill. Is that what you're envisioning?

For you, Chair. Yeah, at Broad Brush, that's an idea. We haven't talked about it.

Phillips. Through you, Chair, to Mr. Pitone, we actually did talk about it. We asked the MSBA if we could do that, and they said no. We applied for Two elementary schools, two K-8s, that's what they gave us funding for. So we maybe, I know you all can tell me, in 10, 15 years, if we want to change the programming of that school after it's built, I think we probably could, but... Going into it saying we're building a middle school, the MSBA has given us a hard flat no. I do want to switch and just share my position and I fully share my position knowing I'm leaving and so I don't know how much it matters but this is my position. Number one, I'm not at all confident that that MSBA money is gonna be there for any school we wanna build past this one. And so that's part of my calculations. I think we should build as big as we can with the money they're going to give us now because I don't know if we're going to get it again in all honesty.

Second thing I think of is Ward 3 is actually the only district in the city that doesn't have a K-8, and that's fine. We are a very small city. I don't believe we need a school in every ward. I do believe that every kid should have access to a great school. And I think we can do that here. The equitable allocation of our resources is to build a joint school and to not have two completely segregated schools, to find a way to integrate our schools by race and class. I think combining schools gets us closer to that. So I like either Scenario D or Scenario E. Personally, I lean towards Scenario E and the reason is solely because I think kids need a place to play and I can't In good conscience, recommend that we put a huge school on a lot that's too small for a playground.

So that leads me to scenario E. Thank you for that.

Ms. Green?

So I will be sharing all these thoughts with the CAG. I appreciate in advance. Mr. Garcia has always excellent minutes because that's how I'll be sharing it. But I feel like I made it as both your representative to the CAG and your representative to the building committee to share my thoughts. And so I will start off by saying I have, from the beginning of this process, leaned towards rebuilding at Sycamore. Nothing I've heard in this process has changed that feeling for me. If anything, it is hardened. One, trauma is more expensive. Two, I am deeply skeptical that the state would accept that land swap if proposed especially since I am fairly confident that like any building built in a at a time broke city in the 70s we start digging under sycamore we're going to find things we don't we don't like um

and so I don't think sales hate that deal and you'd have to flatten the hill to pick a softball field so like I'm still I think actually the cost has been just low and I'm going to spend an additional 10 million dollars on capital improvements In Somerville, that's not where I'd prioritize. So for me, the question is 650, 950. And I think a couple of things on that. One, I have been For as long as I've been on school committee, I have been clear with anyone who asked that I could not see a scenario where I felt comfortable going to the residence of the mystics and Zane. 1,000 to spend. Was your number 307,000 per seat? For a school.

that frankly did not serve the full diversity of the city. There's no nice way to put that. and I just could not see a situation where I'd be able to tell them at Residence Mystics that with all of our needs, with all of the gaps in achievement that we've discussed tonight, that was where I wanted to spend $300,000 per student. which is not, and I want to be clear on this because I've said this in the beginning, not saying that I think when we consolidate schools that's closing the route. It does say to me that if I'm going to spend money on seats, I want to spend as much money on seats to serve everyone in the central location for the lowest cost as possible. More seats is better than fewer seats. Both, I think, to meet the needs of our current district and it gives us flexibility going forward. Um...

And I cannot, but it does mean I would feel really uncomfortable making, fixing that building, the current building that houses the Brown, a capital priority. And I think if we were to pass up, On the exercise seats at the Winter Hill now, we would have to make that a priority and I am cognizant of the fact that this is not our only capital need. Basically, we need to replace roofs. There's a lot of capital needs this district has. That it feels to me to be more pressing, more in service of equity, then passing opportunity, then investing in a building that even with all the money we throw at it, would still not be a 21st century learning building. If I was going to renovate a building in this district, it would be Cummings. The footprint's too small.

We cannot build a school worthy of our students on the Brown-Corn Brown footprint. And as we discussed last week, Trying to buy the round route, which has been proposed, would be expensive to do voluntarily, and doing it through the domain would be a year-long process. So if we were to use something at the Brown, that'd be something other than a 20 to 50 person K-5 school. And I'd be open to that. I think we could think about alternative ways of using that building, but I cannot testify Spending nine figures to keep the brown as it is. So that's where I'm coming from currently. and so I think I'm leaning towards the 950 building at the Cummings. I'm not at the Cummings, sorry, at Sycamore.

But as I've been through this process, I'm open to new data and hearing new things as the process moves forward.

I just want to respond to Dr. Phillips' concern about loss of outdoor space at the Warner Hill, especially because I brought up that concern for the Brown School. At some point, In these conversations, I think the idea was floated of potentially using the Evergreen Annex, this municipal annex building on Evergreen I think there was some suggestion that potentially when that building is no longer needed because other city buildings get the capital upgrades they need that that property could be turned into additional outdoor space for a school on Sycamore. At the Brown School, those options are take over Kidder and take by eminent domain two homes, which

Seems like a much bigger lift than, and I believe the city has already demonstrated that it's challenging to do that. So anyway, just like, in fairness and like to sort of apples to apples it like there are there are outdoor space challenges and things that would be given up in either case but I think that there are Shorter Paths to Remedies at the Sycamore site. And as we heard, there might be opportunities at St. Anne's. And there might be opportunities to put, as they do in New York City, something on the roof. Again, they could do that at the Brown too, but I just wanted to sort of... express those ideas that I've sort of been thinking about too. Mr. Green?

I just actually realized I also neglected my other one other point I had regarding not voting at Trump. which is that we are a geographically segregated city as well as a in terms of race and class the median income of Our westernmost zip code is 20% higher than the median income of our easternmost zip code. And my guess is if you were to try to actually do Poverty rates and mean income, although the Census Bureau doesn't break it down that way on those issues, you would find probably even starker differences. And so, While I am mindful of the difficulty of getting across the city on an east-west basis, as I think anyone who lives here is,

That tie to me goes towards not moving seats more west, given the population of our schools in our city. Ideally, we could build more seats everywhere, but in the reality that all issues are space issues and we don't have that option, I am not looking to move seats further west at the moment.

I forgot, I meant to look at a map. Does anyone know approximately what the distance is between Trum and Sycamore?

About 0.6 miles.

So we're talking about approximately $10 million to go. Half mile, yeah. Okay, thank you for that. It's true, there are other pros, but we're just talking about distance. Dr. Ackman, Ms. Barish, and then, no, Dr. Ackman and Ms. Barish.

Thank you. Through the chair, this does make me think, you know, a neighbor who does not have children, is not in education, you know one of those unicorns that lives in Somerville um she mentioned she mentioned to me that like she actually you know found the the community survey and she took it and one of the things she She asked my opinion on it, and I did a version of what Ms. Pitone did at her. I was like, I don't know. Here are the factors I'm weighing. and one of the things she said about Trump is that she would as a community member she was opposed and she thinks that while there are plenty of community members who may just not be aware

Once they start digging up Trump, there's going to be a whole new set of community members who are profoundly unhappy at that green space being taken away, which is just something I hadn't... You know, because we operate in a world where most everyone knows everything we're doing, that was something that I think is a valid point.

Ms. Parrish? Just another thought I've had about TRUM. I think putting schools on the border of another city just doesn't work well for us. We can only draw from One Direction around the building and with Medford in the backyard of Trum is it doesn't Improve walkability as much as people might think it would, whereas obviously Sycamore is almost smack dab in the middle of, certainly more in the middle. and easier access from a broader area of the city.

All good points. Ms. Pitone? Sorry to continue the conversation. You know, we all know green space is a challenge. I appreciate Dr. Phillips' point of like, if I were to have my fantasy with math and looking at the map and saying, where would I put a school? Trump is a better spot than Sycamore Street, I'll just be frank, and it has more space. I do agree that people will be bummed, you know, We haven't gotten any data about utilization like that field honestly I don't have data but like I drive by that all the time and it does not always utilize as a softball field. it gets utilized as other things but I'd be curious but it's too late for that to know like relative to like Brown is constantly being used that little playground back there because I hear it 24 7 in my backyard um so anyway that's just i mean it doesn't mean we shouldn't have spaces for baseball and softball players so i i definitely want to have that um

but I did want to just quickly comment you know I had so many things I covered the one thing I didn't cover that I wanted to thank Ms. Barish was talking about The ADA compliance is one of the reasons why definitely if we were going to keep two schools, we'd have to spend money on that school in my opinion. And I also wanted to point out, and people don't want to hear things like this, but I have heard that some SPED services are delivered in the hallway. and that really breaks down for me like there's no dignity in that for a student to have to be you know we have to give those services and we will give those services and we don't there's probably not a ton of kids that get them because parents opt out of this school I'll be a hundred percent frank parents who have kids that are complicated that they think they need more gross motor space and are going to have to get services like that delivered do not choose the school

and right now I wish all our schools could be equally chosen by every every person in the community they shouldn't feel like I can't be there because there's not enough outdoor space and my kid would have to get sped services in the hallway so I just wanted to flag that as yet another piece of sort of a tangible kind of anecdotal situation of you know we're all doing our best and the city is the district gives all the services that they're supposed to give but they don't have the spaces and so you know If we were going to continue having that building, it may make sense to take another grade out. I mean, these are things that I think about pretty deeply, and I know everyone here on this table does, and I'm not out to get that school. I love that community. Those people are so passionate about that school, but it's just really hard. to not have a school where everybody can choose into which I think Mr. Green spoke to is that we have people who opt out of that so I just wanted to emphasize that and thank Ms. Barish for highlighting the thing I left off my very long list of things to talk about.

Okay, I think we're good for now then. We still have a few more items on our agenda, so we should get moving. That brings us to the state budget sign-on letter. This would be our second reading. I will take any questions or I'll entertain a motion to authorize me to sign on our behalf.

So moved.

I have a motion by Mr. Green seconded by Dr. Phillips. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. That brings us to the MASC conference delegate and resolutions. Tonight would be our first reading. I will admit that I have not read them yet. I'm not sure who is going to the conference this year. I think I'm going. So it's just the three of us. So the way it works is one of us will get nominated to be the delegate. We can discuss that at the next meeting and at that time the body can let whoever that is know if they have any strong opinions about any of the resolutions ahead of the conference. So that will be on our next agenda. So if there's no questions for now, We can move on to the superintendent summative evaluation. Dr. Phillips? I know everyone's tired.

Just what we wanted to talk about at 9.57 PM. Dr. Carmona, should I frame it up and then you can, do you want to walk us through your memo or just flag it?

Sounds good.

Okay, so friendly reminder, we have four Huge powers on the school committee, one of which is hiring and managing the superintendent, which we are in the process now. We are at the end of the second cycle. Coming up on the summative evaluation, which is the one where we fill out the form and we compile the results and then we talk about it. Why don't I go through the instructions first, if that's okay? Ms. Garcia, could you put up on the screen the document, our Carmona end of cycle summative? While she's doing that, I will let you all know we're going to have the summative evaluation conversation at our next meeting, October 20th, which means that

Everybody's version of this form that's up on the screen now needs to be to me by email on Thursday, October 16th, 2025. Ideally by close of business. Okay, so the first thing you need to do when you sit down to do this is you need to review the superintendent's goals and the superintendent's goals update. Those two documents are in your packet. They're the last documents in your packet tonight. When you've read them, you've thought about them, you are ready to fill out this form. Ms. Garcia, could we go to page three, please? Notice, we're starting on page three. On page three, you're gonna evaluate the superintendent on his Performance Goals. Those are the goals that we approved last year with the focus indicators from the MASC rubric right there. You're going to start and you're going to rate those on page three.

Then, Ms. Garcia, can we move on to page four? Okay, so pages four through seven all look like this sheet right here. There's a page for each standard. Your job, Andre Green, this one's for you, is to score the ones that are highlighted in yellow. You don't need to score all of them, just the ones highlighted in yellow. In your packet, there's a document. I'm reading from it now. It's the summative evaluation instructions. It has the full rubric for each of these highlighted in yellow focus indicators. Read the rubric. Figure out what score you want to assign to the superintendent. Again, only the ones highlighted in yellow. When you are done, if we could stay right here. Can we scroll up a little bit, please? Sorry, standard four, right here. You finished the standard. You routed those two focus indicators.

Now you have to aggregate them to an overall score at the bottom, right? That's just the average of your two for this one. Okay? Once you've done that, you've done page 3, you've done pages 4 to 7, keep track of your scores, go back to page 1. On page 1... You're just re-entering scores from another page in the form. So again, your scores should not change from pages three through seven to page one. They should be the same scores. So where it says assess progress towards goals, those are the same scores you put on three. When it says assess performance on standards, those are the same scores you put overall on pages four to seven. Are there any questions about what you're doing? How to fill out this form. All right, so again, it is due to me on the 16th.

In your packet today, Dr. Carmona has helpfully gone through each of his goals Each of his focus indicators and given us lots and lots of evidence that is in the form of a memo which is the superintendent's goals update to the school committee. Superintendent Carmona, I'll pass it over to you if there's anything you want to highlight or any discussion you want to have at this point.

Yeah, I'll just take it from where you left it. And so thank you very much for doing this. I know that similar to the system that we use for our instructional leaders and our The idea is always to make sense of the learning ideally by embedding the work in the daily operations of the system. So the idea is just so it is meaningful and also provides feedbacks for improvement. So that's within the same spirit of what we I am really open to your feedback. The document that you have in front of you is one that you have seen before. It's something that I presented a while ago. These are the updates on that document. As you will see, many of these reflect the work that is happening through each of the departments.

I have the great pleasure and opportunity to work with departments that actually do most of the work. My work is to orchestrate the work and then bring some alignment across the board and also Be constantly making sure that the systems that we use to check the work are happening. The other thing you will see in this document is that next to it, We added the strategic plan alignment, so it makes more sense from the overall big picture. And then the key actions, I just want to remind you how we got to this. It was a conversation with Actually, a couple of you around what are some of the things that both I felt were needed and also the feedback that I got from the school committee or some members of the school committee. I just want to bring you to specific places as far as the student learning goal.

So one of the key actions that I wanted to share with you, as you know, the HQIM has been something that we outlined from the beginning. The implementation has been through a multiple checks and balances that JSC's department often Thank you very much. and many more. We have created a balance in terms of doing this Work of building a rigorous HQIM in a way that is also manageable and doable for teachers and educators.

The other piece that you will see is an update in terms of the work that has been done with the special education as well as the MLE team and that again came in part of the feedback that we received through the The negotiations process as to how to make sure we create the conditions for educators to strengthen their special education and their MLE knowledge. You will see on page two that there are references to that integration of work that is happening in these departments. The other thing that you will see is there is an update in terms of the work that again has happened through the work that Dr. Jessica Boston has been doing around Learning Walks, Explore Guidance, and then the Common Plan in Time and the District PDE.

So those three things actually have been revised and have been adjusted, both for principals as well as for educators in our district. I'm going to move to the professional practice goal. There's not much that is different in this goal from what you saw the last time. It was basically how I was building my skill set becoming superintendent in a district like ours that is complex and nuanced. And the only thing that I added to that category is Something that I call reflections on leadership growth and I put it an appendix at the end just to give you an idea of How some of the feedback that I have been asking our allocators, our principals and leaders has informed some of my growth.

So and I also added to that piece that in part that conversation and that feedback that I'm getting from principals has been the driver behind the idea of using data as our One of our bigger pillars of making sure that we have an instruction and leadership data-driven approach. And there's a visual at the end in the appendix that actually is information I've gathered from both principals and the central office team. operations goals I again I am very very thankful for the work that is happening especially the leadership that is happening under Our chief of staff and also, as you know, we build capacity by having another person.

in the team and Danielle has been very instrumental in making sure that This idea of monitoring the things that are important doesn't get lost. And there are multiple things that have happened in that department but I think the overall The understanding that I have from this work is the consistency and the cadence on checking on these things and also I have to say, one of the challenges that we had at the beginning when I started my cycle was finding the right tone and balance to basically be a good partner with the city and also hold them accountable in some of the complex relationships that we have. and I think that again our chief of staff has done an amazing job as being very professional and yet she also elevated the tone of things when they need to be elevated so I think that even for me, for my learning, I'm learning a lot from how she manages and handles situations of this nature.

and again the list of things are here I don't want to get into an itemized list of achievements but that's basically The only one thing I'll take credit for that is basically making sure that both the design of that relationship and also the skill set that Amara brings into the work is the right match. Then the other piece out of out-of-school time also there's a lot that again is the same framework that it was basically Making sure that we expand communication with families and provide access as well. A lot has happened around that in regards to the work that both SFLC is doing and the out-of-school time team.

I think that one thing that I wanted to highlight that has taken us quite some time that at some point also was part of the work that our fellow Dr. Barretta was working on was this idea of family ID. There was a lot of, which is called actually Arbiter Sports. It might be a simple thing, but what this will allow us to do is basically create some consistency for all families who come into the district to participate. Registered Students for Clubs or Offshore School. And as simple as that might be, that has taken us quite some time to get there. We are currently not piloting, but we are actually scaling The great thing about this is that it allows us to kind of Keep all the information from

K all the way through high school is the same system creates consistency and also creates a standard that allows us to keep the same understanding of health needs for students so when a student has Any allergies we can actually track down from their experiences in our school from K all the way to high school. There are other things that are very explicit to you in terms of the ask about increasing capacity of the different out-of-school time of the community schools. and so on. We did that. Again, this is a collaboration that happened with the city, SFLC, and Out of School Time. There is a document at the end of the appendix about the number of

I know this has been a priority that has been in your mind as members of the committee, but also is a question around access. For us, the arc of the growth for OST still is not there yet. One of the things that we're actually looking at is how do we make sure that the connection between the day-to-day learning of the students especially those who struggle how do they end up in out of a school time in a way that in in the um and not out of school time, but in the community schools in a way that is seamless and systematic. We're not there yet, but we are in the process of looking at

We have different options to make sure that our programs not only addresses the needs of all the families who have come to us and say, hey, I need a solution for my daycare situation, but also that we provide a rigorous as well as a Tie connection to instruction and after school hours. and then the workforce diversity goal again the work that happens in that department is being led by the HR department or the people department and they do a lot of work around Looking at what are some of the places in which we We narrowed that question around our current diversification efforts and the impact of that. As you know, the data has been hard to find because we didn't have a good baseline.

I know Karen has spent countless hours trying to create a system that allows us to do that and so we are we finished that we again The work, the appendix at the bottom will give you an idea of where we are with that diversification process. I think that those are the biggest things that I wanted to mention to you in terms of what has changed from the last time that you saw this plan to this plan. And it's mainly the alignment of this strategic plan and some of the key Okay, thank you for that.

Are there any questions? I know it's getting late. If as you fill this out you have any questions, you can obviously reach out to the superintendent for any detail from his evidence or to Dr. Phillips with more procedural questions. and otherwise this will be on our agenda on the 20th and you need to get yours to sarah on the 16th or before the 16th even or before even okay

Thank you through you thanks to Dr. Phillips for doing all the yeoman's work of putting or your person's work putting all this stuff together and for the superintendent for creating so much detail and What is the next step for the next cycle?

We basically do but we have one more year on the superintendent's goals, right? Is this right?

Yes, and many of these goals that we have here are somewhat finite in the scope of their arc, so some of them will come to an end. because it will be just a matter of monitoring some of these things. But I do think that it will be great to have a conversation about how do we Mary, both the school improvement goals at every building and the work in part of the work that you heard today in terms of like how do we make sure that our district is heading in the right direction. So I would like at some point your feedback in terms of Looking at the current needs that we have and also identifying next steps. I think that the overarching strategic plan is also a three to five year, but within that strategic plan there are things that actually can be narrowed down.

Through you, I'm probably not going to use the right language. So we evaluate the goals, but we also evaluate all the items in the competencies and the rubrics. and so we have to re-look at those and come up with new ones next year that's usually or do we do that every two years I don't remember the model and my question is if we are creating new ones do we have a timeline and maybe for next week create a timeline to do that work

So the goals all come with their focus indicators. When you select the goals, you select the focus indicators. So we're gonna keep working on those till we're done. What we agreed is once we finish this summative evaluation, we're going to review the goals for the next cycle and kick it off so we may want to change some of the focus indicators at that point we may not want to but they're selected at the same time another year because this is a we have one more year on this cycle we're going to review and tweak everything probably right after we finish this on the 20th but then yeah so as long as i know what times i have to look at things and what's the schedule for tweaking

That's great.

Thank you. Okay. If there is nothing further, we have a few more items. We can knock them out. We have an integrated contract to authorize me to sign. I'll entertain a motion.

I have a motion to authorize the chair to sign the integrated contracts for SU unit A, C, and E. Second.

I have a motion by Dr. Ackman, seconded by Ms. Biton. If there is no discussion, all in favor? All opposed? Motion carries. That brings us to school committee coordinated fall office hours. A couple people brought a few of them to us already so we were thinking we should coordinate them. I was thinking perhaps the last week in October? Do people think about that as the goal? The last week in October into the first week in November? Does that sound good? It doesn't have to be anything too complicated. Is anyone willing to coordinate them? Just keep a running list basically of what they are. You're nodding your head, but very unenthusiastically.

I would love to.

Thanks, Eleanor.

You lie so well.

In order to get them posted to the district website, do I share them with Ms. Garcia, Mr. Nash? Ms. Garcia.

and I think we usually put them in whatever newsletter we put out and that would be great.

Okay, that brings us to a field trip. I will entertain a motion.

I move to approve a field trip for April 9, 2026 to April 11, 2026 for 150 students from Somerville High School Music and Theater Departments to travel to Chicago, Illinois to perform in, observe, and experience the arts in Chicago. Travel via plane student cost $900 to $1,000.

I have a motion by Ms. Barish, seconded by Mr. Biton, Mr. Green.

So I went back and forth on whether I want to comment on this or not. But the reality is the total student cost for this is somewhere between $135,000 and $150,000. which means there's no way to do this trip without serious fundraising and we want to keep our pledge that any student who wants to go on a field trip can go without the ability to pay. I think this sounds amazing, but I really want to know more about how he's going to pull this off. And I want to ask the question, honestly, of raising $150,000 to send a kiss to Chicago at a time when You know, 100 kids at the Healy have lost their daily heating. A lot of students are losing basic needs. Is that the most important fundraising goal we have? Or is there some way we can give an equivalent experience for less money?

and I'm asking these questions and not saying I think we shouldn't do it, but I think we're talking about these kinds of figures. We have a moral obligation to ask the questions and make sure that we are using the district's resources and by distribution I mean including our fundraising capacity which is also finite to its best purposes and again I would love to see this happen it sounds amazing I just I want to know more.

Uh, through you, Chair, I want to raise a different issue about this field trip. I'm certainly happy to prove it. When I watched, I moved here from Chicago, My friends are deeply involved in politics in the city, and when I talk to them about what the federal government is doing in Chicago right now, I am terrified and I don't want our children anywhere near that. And as a board member, I would be terrified that one of our children would be hurt Were we to send them to Chicago right now? So I'm not saying that we shouldn't go. I'm happy to approve this field trip, but I'm wondering what kind of review process the district wants to put in place Plays to make sure that when we say all systems are go on this trip, we're pretty confident we can keep our kids safe. And that is no shade to the city of Chicago that is doing its best to remain calm and law-abiding at this moment.

I had Dr. Ackman and then Ms. Green. Thank you. Through the chair, I would say to... maybe expand and you know Dr. Phillips will tell me if this is not within the spirit but you know given what happened with the most recent field trip approval and you know I am an N of one but you know I've seen at schools and heard from families especially families of religious minorities of you know of of field trips being scheduled like and then the family has to be the one to say like hey like this is on the school calendar this is a really important holiday for my faith tradition like you know and which again like I appreciate that the district can or the school can acknowledge that that is it but that is when it landed but

Like, that not happening proactively, like it still has to go, you know, families have to go and speak up. would love like a you know keeping that in mind sort of like a comprehensive whether it's a memo whatever you know however it is delivered like to understand really what our systems are especially as I think we're talking about sort of How to consider field trips in each of the schools. I am at a moment where I don't believe our systems are tight there and I would love more confidence in that.

Mr. Green and then Ms. Barish.

I also just want to build on Dr. Phillips' point because the other question I would have is I'm not sure I would send my kid to Chicago right now. And I just came back from there, so I also love Chicago. I think people start doing their best, but... I'm not sure I would send my brown kid to Chicago right now without, like, a real detailed safety plan. So I'd want to know that we have that.

We had Ms. Barish and then Mr. Biton.

I'm curious about what the urgency is on this. I'm not saying that people are saying it's urgent. I'm wondering if it is urgent that we approve this or if perhaps we could get some Do you have a response to some of the concerns that folks are raising and perhaps vote on it at the next meeting or is there a sense from the organizers of this field trip that they need approval now in order to start the enormous amount of fundraising for example that they would need to do.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My guess is that the sooner the better. I think the educators that are organizing are planning on going and kind of going through this formal process, but they I certainly would like to go with their students. Many of the questions I need to talk to the team to get answers to. I can absolutely connect with The Educators, I can connect with Beverly Mosby, and there actually have been a number of other emails that are related to some of the concerns brought up here so I can put all of that together in a memo based on this and bring it at the next point but my guess is that they would like to see it approved Sooner, so that they can continue to plan.

Ms. Pitone, you're good. Ms. Pitone? Thank you to you not to extend this meeting too much longer but in the past when we've had large I'm not saying they have to come here, but people shared how they were gonna fundraise. and they shared not only how they were going to do it but that that was their commandment and responsibility as educators that they've chosen to do this and that you know our support of those trips was always predicated by that and the understanding that Students are not opting out because they can't pay. So I just wanted to flag that it's not unusual in our process that when we have an expensive trip and there's no clarity around how the money is going to be fundraised that

We get that input and acknowledging this is a ton of work so I don't want to minimize the work that someone would have to do to fundraise and I would be grateful if that was happening so I'm just I'm going to put that out there because that's the kind of thing I would like to see to say in addition to all the thoughtful comments from the whole group.

Okay, so with that, are we comfortable voting tonight, or would we like to wait until our next meeting? Motion to table until next week, or next meeting? Second. Okay, we have motion to table. All in favor? All opposed? Okay well we have to as I think that how many should we have the motion to table? Okay all right so we will have this on our agenda for our next meeting.

Okay, we have some donations. The superintendent recommends acceptance with gratitude of beauty supplies from the salon 10 at Newberry in Boston. Something at a value of $840 to the CTE cosmetology shop. So moved.

Is there a second? That was the first. All right, we have a motion by Dr. Ackman, seconded by Ms. Barish. All in favor? All opposed? Motion carries. That brings us to items from committee members. Does anyone have anything? Ms. Pitone?

I have a question. Did we skip the FY27 state budget sign-on letter or was I in the bathroom? Okay, I'm out. Thank you.

Thank you for chatting. It was a quick conversation. All right, any other items from committee members? If not, we are adjourned. Have a good night, everyone.