School Committee Highlights - October 2, 2023
On October 2, 2023 the School Committee met for its regular meeting and voted to approve several exciting overnight field trips.
Superintendent's Leadership Report
Superintendent Burkhead explained that our district met with the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) Facilities Assessment Subcommittee (FAS) last week to present information, answer questions, and receive feedback about the Cushing/Hatherly MSBA new building project in advance of the MSBA Board meeting at which the project vote will occur.
Upon successful conclusion of procurement of Owner's Project Management and Designer services, the District and its team collaborated with the MSBA to document their educational program, generate an initial space summary, document existing conditions, establish design parameters, develop and evaluate alternatives, and recommend the most cost effective and educationally appropriate preferred solution to the MSBA Board of Directors for their consideration.
Please see the link below for more information. Our next school building committee meeting is Wednesday, October 18th in the SHS Harbor Conference Room at 5:30pm, and our next public meeting is Wednesday, December 6 in the Hatherly Elementary cafeteria at 6:30pm.
Assistant Superintendent's Leadership Report
Assistant Superintendent Driscoll shared our Fall 2023 District Accountability Summary highlighting that this is the first time since 2019 that the full accountability system has been run. This year, all schools have accountability percentiles for the schools themselves and for student groups a well as scores for progress towards individual schools' targets which resulted in Jenkins Elementary being named one of the state's 66 Schools of Recognition. Links to each schools' accountability report is available on the school website and the district accountability report is available on the link below.
Schools were recognized for ELA growth rates that are high typical growth and high growth. Cushing, Jenkins, and Gates made significant jumps in growth.
Jenkins and Wampatuck were standouts with mathematics growth increases. Gates did have a slight increase in mathematics growth, but still falls in the low growth category.
Although the accountability report indicates that schools met their goals to decrease chronic absenteeism, the rate of chronic absenteeism for both non high school grades and high school substantially impacts the amount of instructional time students receive. A student is identified as having chronic absenteeism when the student has missed 10% of their membership days. For a typical 180 school year, that is equal to nearly a month absent, 18 days. In FY23 10.8% of all students in non high school grades had chronic absenteeism, and at the high school level, 15,4% of all students had chronic absenteeism.
Our schools' overall percentile rankings increased or were sustained at Cushing, Gates, Hatherly, and Jenkins. Hatherly was recognized for sustaining a percentile ranking of 91 which was their percentile ranking prepandemic. Jenkins and Gates were also recognized for exceeding prepandemic percentile rankings.
At this time, we are celebrating Jenkins as a School of Recognition & the district focus is on overall high school accountability percentile ranking. The high school staff is already focused on the foundational elements of attendance and engagement. Principals will share school specific data with school councils & educators to make connections to school level data, classroom level data, and school improvement plans. See the complete presentation slide deck below.
Parents/caregivers should expect their child/children's individual reports from the state sent home in backpacks on Monday, October 16th. If anyone prefers to have the report mailed home, please use the link below by 10/10/23 to notify your principal of your preference.
