Welcome to the August 20th meeting of the Sharon Public School Committee.

This meeting will be conducted remotely over Zoom.

Attendance by board members will be remote, and remote attendance shall count towards a quorum.

The meeting will be broadcast live and recorded by Sharon TV.

If you would like to enable your webcam, your image and background may be broadcast with or without sound.

We will begin the meeting, as we always do, with public comment.

I ask that everyone keep their comments to two minutes.

Other than that, I will open it up. Is there someone from the committee? Adam, would you be willing to put a timer up?

I don't know what your expertise.

All right.

All good.

We will open public comment.

Okay. Seeing no hands, I will throw it to our Secretary, Alan Matanko, for correspondence.

Hi, everybody.

Hope you all had a good summer.

The school committee received 27 pieces of correspondence between June 18th, 2025 and August 19th, 2025. We received a few letters with feedback on the location for the meeting that expressed appreciation for moving to an in-person meeting and a request to offer an option for a community member to participate in the public comment section remotely, whether or not the meeting is held in person. A former employee reached out to the school committee regarding a compensation issue. We received a public records request from a community member seeking all documents and materials related to Dr. Routello's mid-cycle formative evaluation.

The CPAC notified the school committee of its new board officers.

Congratulations to those folks. We received invitations to several community events being sponsored by the Sharon Pluralism Network, the Norfolk County Sheriff's Department, and Massachusetts Special Commission to Combat Antisemitism.

A community member wrote to the school committee related to compliance issues associated with a recent Supreme Court decision and with a request that the school committee reviewed their policies to ensure they are up to date. A parent wrote to the name and contact information of the dean of affairs at Sharon High School.

We received an inquiry regarding the impact that the Trump administration's decisions regarding reductions in education funding at the federal level may have on the district budget.

A departing administrator wrote to the school committee to share their thoughts and concerns regarding the culture, leadership, and state of the Sharon Public Schools. We received several editions of the Medco newsletter, including a departing note from CEO Millie Auberge Thomas and an incoming note from interim CEO Deborah Ward, a former Sharon Medco director.

The newsletters highlighted summer activities, student support, and professional development opportunities, as well as an announcement regarding enrollment for the 26-27 school year.

Community members and CPAC reached out to the school committee regarding the extended school year programs and staff support in those programs, specifically the SOAR program. These letters also raised concerns regarding the ongoing issues in the TBL program and requested that the district provide information and plans to address each of these issues for the new school year.

A parent wrote to inquire about exceptions to the residency requirements for students attending the Sharon Public Schools.

The town administrator asked for the school committee to appoint the SC representative to the recreation advisory group to participate in the athletic study group, which is a temporary advisory group to the board of selectmen.

This advisory group will be working to study athletic fields, including demand, conditions, potential expansion of fields, and new sites.

The review is to encompass natural grass surfaces, as well as evaluating the feasibility and limitations of artificial turf athletic fields.

Several high school parents wrote to request that the school committee reconsider the language in the Sharon High Handbook regarding excused absences, particularly as this language relates to student athletes. The Sharon Jewish Action Committee wrote to request that the school committee work to address the rising anti-Semitism in the Sharon Public Schools and to review and consider implementing a plan developed by the American Jewish Committee, which addresses these issues.

A parent wrote with questions about the Sharon High School parking lot pass situation for their student, and that was the conclusion of correspondence.

Thanks, Alan.

Thanks, Alan.

Next, we will throw it to Dr. Botello for superintendent updates, including back-to-school general updates, enrollment updates, new hire updates, and organizational changes.

Great.

Thank you. First of all, just I'm recovering from a respiratory virus thing, so if my voice is a little off, I apologize.

But we have been having a busy, busy summer and are really excited to start the school year.

Definitely have lots of students, staff in and about the buildings.

We also started with new staff orientation on Monday and Tuesday.

Opening days for staff begin on Monday and Tuesday of next week.

And then our first day of school, grades 1 through 12, is on Wednesday.

First day for kindergarten would be on Thursday.

There's no school on that Friday.

And then the day after Labor Day, September 2nd, pre-K, begin.

Be looking out for, you know, and thinking about back-to-school routines, as well as, you know, looking for information on bus routes and timing.

Be patient in those first few days. There's always some things that need to be continued to be re-revised as we do those routes for the first time each year.

Dress for warm weather.

And also, as you get your handbooks, review those.

The Power School Portal will be open on Friday for the high school and the middle school. Elementary opened in early August.

And we've done tons.

Our maintenance and consisterial crew have been incredibly busy under the leadership of Curtis St. Holmes and Ellen Whittemore.

And they'll be finishing up miscellaneous cleaning and repairs.

We're also working in collaboration with DPW on the grounds.

We have an awesome new life skills component to some of our special education classrooms at Heights, which kids will take full advantage of, as well as carpet replacements and parent routes for new parents in our buildings.

As far as activity fees, as people realized from last year, the operating budget identified an additional revenue of $25,000 to be raised via new club activity fees.

Club and activities costs can vary greatly based on advisors, competition expenses, and other miscellaneous expenses.

The district will introduce these new user fees, which were approved back in March.

Families will be receiving an email with all this information right at the start of the school year.

These fees apply to both middle school and high school clubs and activities.

And they'll be used to offset some of the current district expenses for these clubs and activities at the middle school and high school. Clubs and activities that pay for expenses, such as trips and competitions, will continue to do so. So these extraordinary trips and competitions still will have some additional fees connected, though some of it can be offset, it will. Each club and activity will have a student activity fund where the monies go into, and this will be governed by the department and MGL regulations.

District plans to establish new revolving counts where funds are collected.

These funds will be used to offset expenses that are normally handed via the operating counts for these programs. We've developed tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3.

If you're in a tier 1, which are just a small number of clubs, which I'll show on the next slide, if you do one season of that, it's $100.

If you do two of those, it's $200, and that's the limit that you can pay.

It also allows you just participation in one of the tier 1. It also allows you participation in unlimited tier 2 clubs.

Tier 2 clubs are the majority of the clubs in the middle, and there's a $50 cap for, so if you participate in tier 2 clubs, you get unlimited enrollment in tier 2 clubs.

And tier 3 clubs have no cost.

So the tier 1 clubs include at the high school drama, jazz band, and other music opportunities.

Other music opportunities are now classes, so those are pretty much drama and jazz band at the high school. As well as, and then at the, that includes the musical when we say drama.

Middle school drama, musical band, chorus, orchestra, jazz band.

So again, if you participate in two of these, it would be $200.

That is the max, and you also get participation in all tier 2.

Tier 2 clubs, these are some examples up there.

And then, so those are $50 per club per student in unlimited enrollment.

So if you just participate in tier 2 clubs, you pay $50 and have unlimited enrollment.

And then tier 3, here are the examples.

And we'll have a full list of these tier 3 clubs, so that we have a full list of tier 1 and tier 2, and tier 3, and then all the remaining will be tier 2. But these are the types of clubs that are really contributing directly to the running of the school, and they have no fee. Enrollment update.

We have a current enrollment K-12 of 3,325.

That is down a bit from 3,386, which we had predicted that we would have some decline between last year and this year, based upon outgoing seniors.

Elementary numbers are 1382, also in your packet and linked is the detailed enrollment by class, which was similar to what I shared in last year.

I'm going to pull that up today, too.

So those are the numbers per grade at the elementary school.

If I pull up this detailed, it's very much what we were predicting.

We have, you know, some 22-21s at Heights and Cottage, a bit lower east.

We do have some kids going to east who are Heights and Cottage neighborhood kids. We had some, a couple of additional kids at Heights and Cottage who needed to be placed there because of specialized programs or who are literally living across the street from the school.

And so, but if you look at some of those Heights numbers are a little bit inflated in that four of the kiddos in that 86 number belongs to some of our substantially separate programs.

So they're not impacting the class sizes for them for a lot of the daytime during that, as well as one of the students at Cottage.

We have that grade two at East capped at 23.

And we have other numbers that are kind of very similar to what we showed predicting that last year, as well as the high school and middle school numbers are very much on par with what we shared on the 10th of June last year. So I'll continue to share these enrollment updates periodically throughout the year, as well as when we get into the end of the year, as we start to do projections again for next year. But these numbers, we still, you know, we continue to have small numbers of kids who are enrolling as well as kids who are having finalized IEPs, which require some changes.

So these things will continue to evolve even over the next couple of days and weeks, as well as to some degree during the school year. So again, as I showed on the bigger sheet, here's the numbers for the middle school and high school.

Those eighth grade numbers stand where we expected so that we'll be able to manage those class sizes with our cuts very, very well.

Hiring updates and organizational changes. We have Astrid Mazuriegos who had jumped in, you know, I think it was before July 1st, but officially on July 1st and has been working with the team throughout the year, as well as Ellen and Joelle and Carla have been working hard alongside Molly and VanCott, Fran Derry and Curtis DeDonge.

So it's a great team up here in central office.

We have a number of school-based leadership changes.

Matt Furtado and Allie Golder have joined the team at the high school, and they have been in awesome additions already working closely with Ms. Keenan, Ms. Andrews, and Mike Vitelli.

We're still having interviews, so we had a couple of situations fall through at the high school student services administrator, so interviews continue for that.

Joyce Pinto is joining as the special education coordinator at the middle school.

Corey Rogers is joining up at Heights.

Sarah V. Connelly is our new principal, and she has hit the ground running, getting to know all kinds of people and really getting to know the school. And just today we finalized a verbal agreement with Janelle Pearson-Campbell to join her as the student services administrator there.

Ann Marie Gupton has been working since July 1st at the East Elementary as the student services administrator.

And Mark Crean, who was at Heights last year, has jumped over as director of Early Childhood Center.

So a change of position, and he's working with that great staff and the kiddos down there.

I'm looking forward to that this year, but he's already been there a lot of the summer for ESY.

So we've hired over and onboarded over 25 staff in various positions.

We are completing the hiring process for several positions right now.

There are currently several openings that we're still working on. As I said, the student services administrator at the high school.

Janelle Cole continues to support, but we're looking to fill that position as soon as possible.

We had several people, you know, hired or granted the position as SOAR teacher at Heights.

But several people backed out at the last moment.

So we've reposted and interviewed.

We also have contacted one of the best agencies as far as contracting that until filled if we are not able to fill that on day one.

Several open IA positions, which we're in the process of interviewing and also in contact with agencies as necessary.

And we had several people that we offered the position to as executive assistants.

And those fell through.

So we're really looking for someone strong there.

We've interviewed about 10 people as well as screened hundreds.

Jane has offered to continue as secretary of the school committee until filled.

But we'll continue to look to fill that as well.

We'll have additional updates on this at our next meeting on September 3rd.

And I'm going to turn it over to Astrid Mazuriego to just go over a little bit about some of the work she's been doing this summer.

Thank you, Dr. Botello.

Thank you, everyone.

Good evening.

First, thank you for a warm welcome. Thank you, everyone.

Thank you, Dr.zon Soren. Thank you so much. Thank you, everyone.

Thank you, for joining me for now.

Thank you, everyone. Congratulations.

I'm headed overnight to all STIFFsportコ pilamante and in therapy treatment. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.

I can put all those visits on November 4th of 2015. I want to make sure that I say that.

I've been meeting with a lot of families, both individually and in groups.

I hope to continue to do that. I will post a schedule on my email so people can sign up for times to meet.

I'm scheduled to have a meet and greet via Zoom on August 26th from 6 to 7.

I hope everyone got an email about that and a flyer. And then just to let everyone know that you should be receiving your parents' notice of procedure safeguards.

These are very important for you to read. These are your rights as a parent.

And if you have a child in special education or if you're looking for an evaluation, it explains all your rights.

They should be going home through our central office via email.

As far as administrative work, there's been lots happening.

But I did respond to the tier-focused monitoring report.

I sent that to DESE.

I believe it was due July 15th.

I think it was July 11th that I turned it in.

I will be doing a lot of training and reporting with all staff that is involved in special education.

I will present the executive summary to school committee on our next meeting.

I am looking at specialized programs, meeting with the staff, looking at curriculum spaces.

As Dr. Botello mentioned, we engaged in some remodeling of some classrooms at Heights.

I'm really excited about that.

Hopefully, families can come in early to see that before school starts.

Look for some invitation from the teachers there. I am establishing some non-negotiables and norms for our staff.

It's something that CPAC and I have been talking about in order to provide families with transparency, communication, and really getting families involved in our programs especially.

As Dr. Botello mentioned, I've been busy hiring.

It's been a challenging time to hire, but we'll continue the course and hopefully we'll get people to join us here and share in.

My next action steps, some of them, is to look at ESY. Look at the dates, look providing dates early on for families, providing the dates and the schedule for families early on so that they can be planned with camps.

There will be a timeline provided to staff to know when they need to start talking to families about extended school year. It should be before the new year. It should be before the new year. Their families should know whether their students are due an extended school year or not.

Very special circumstances if there's a conversation after the new year.

I'm also looking at some of the security measures that we need to have during extended school year next year. And so, something that I will be working on.

Again, my next steps are to continue to observe, visit schools and students, and meet with families.

And support families and students as best as I can.

All of these topics I have talked to CPAC about, and we have met twice so far.

And I'm excited to continue working as, you know, as a member of the CPAC myself.

So, that's an update from Student Services.

Great. Thank you, Astrid.

I think a common theme among the admin group, and I know it's shared by our teaching staff as well, is like, which Astrid has really modeled in her new days here, is just a love of the work.

People are really excited to do everything we can to continue to get better. We're going to, you know, we had a great admin retreat in which we really talk about how do we continue to use our district plan to focus ourselves.

And we're going to be doing some work with DataWise, which is an institute out of Harvard University that will help us to use data more effectively.

I know that's something we've been talking about, and we're using data, but we want to use it in a more strategic manner.

So, all admin will be doing a training with them, and then we'll have ongoing support with them.

And we're funding this through a grant, a hate crimes grant, which allows us to look at how that data is really supporting all students.

But I want to welcome everyone back to an awesome school year. I don't often, these meetings show my kiddos, but that's what they look like not so long ago. And so, it goes fast.

So, we're looking forward to being focused on what is important and buckling up for a new school year.

So, we're very excited about it.

All right. Thank you, Dr. Botello. Thank you, Astrid.

Thank you for those updates.

Are there any questions from the table on any of those updates, enrollment data? So, Adam?

Yeah.

Just a quick question about, because you went through the fees for clubs and whatnot.

Yep.

I just wanted to call out or verify.

We have scholarship available if anyone has an issue kind of with payment so that no one should be kind of excluded from participation for financial reasons.

Is that right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely.

And that's common with all of our fees.

There should, you know, anyone, anyone, and I know it's not always easy.

I know my grandparents were in that position.

But if at any time it's a financial hardship, please reach out to, you know, your counselor or anyone at the school you feel comfortable with, and we will support you and make sure that you can participate.

All right. Thank you. Thank you.

To coordinate who's going in what order. And I know some place, you know, in the past, there might be some schools that do share them before approval, but they will note pending approval by school committee.

This is a draft pending approval by school committee, but just so people can start to review them. And so, Kristen, would you want to start in? I know you have a short presentation.

I think most of the people are just speaking to it.

I think you're a co-host, so I think you should be able to share.

And if you're not, we'll make you one.

Good evening, everyone.

I am going to try to share my screen right now.

And unfortunately, it's not showing me my.

Do you have the little share button?

Yep.

So hold on one second.

I don't know.

I have a security issue going on. So one second.

You're not able to see that, correct?

You want to reshare it with me? I can share.

Okay. That would be great. I'm sorry.

No problem.

Just send it to my email and I'll pull it up.

Yep.

Well, good evening, everyone. I apologize for the delay.

I hope everybody has had a great summer.

All right.

Good evening. All right.

I sent that, Peter. Okay.

Okay. So I wanted to start and he's going to, Peter's going to share that in a second, but I wanted to start by welcoming everybody new to our school at the high school.

We have some great additions and I'm really, really excited for our administrative team and looking forward to working with Astrid and Janet Cole to find someone for our student service administrator position. But we have a great team moving forward.

We have a great team moving forward and we're very excited about the school year. That being said, I thought that I would start this presentation briefly by reviewing with you some of the things that we added to the handbook last year to give you a little perspective in terms of how successful we were and some of the changes that we made. So one of the first things, and I think if Peter's able to share it, there we go, is the cell phone policy.

So just quickly wanted to mention that last year we started this cell phone policy.

And it's been very successful.

Anecdotally, I will say that teachers overwhelmingly are so excited.

The commentary that they have, our students are talking to us, they're looking us in the eyes, they're having conversations with one another.

It has really changed the tenor of the classrooms at Sharon High School.

And I even think that students in my casual conversations with them, many have admitted that has made a big difference for them in terms of focus and learning in the classroom.

I did want to make you aware if you weren't already in the news that Massachusetts General Court is looking to push forward a full band bell to bell. And so we are paying very close attention to that.

And if that does come to fruition, obviously, we would come back to the drawing board with the administration and the district and school committee, and we would bring that to your attention.

So that was something I wanted to discuss.

Another big issue that we put forward last year, if you're able to go to the next slide, Peter, was an attendance policy.

And so I wanted to give you a little update of where we were.

So what you can see here is from years 2021 to last year, and you can see the attendance rates for those years.

So the attendance rates are kind of circled in purple.

And we have, in the past two years, risen back to pre-COVID attendance rates, which is fantastic news.

It's something that was one of my major goals when I started here at Sharon High School.

When I was going through my interview process and I was doing research on Sharon, and particularly Sharon High School, one of the things that caught my eye was the chronically absent rate at the high school.

Because it is such an amazing school with such amazing staff and amazing students, it really did catch my eye. And it was something I actually brought up in my interviews of wanting to work on. So you can see that as well.

You can see with the green circles, we went from an average in 21-22 to 11.8 absences a year on average.

This past year, with the attendance policy moving forward, we went down to five.

We cut it in half. And also, if you look, say, for example, at students that were absent 10 days or more, in 21-22, 41% of our students were absent 10 days or more.

And then in 22-23, 43% were absent.

My first year, 23-24, we made a big push with attendance.

We pushed it down to a little under 18%.

And then with the attendance policy down to 12.8%, which I'm very proud of.

And then you can see both the chronically absent, both 10% and 20%. Those are the yellow and the red circles.

DESE, the Department of Education, determines that students are chronically absent. If they're absent, 10% or more of the school year, which equates to 18 school days. So you can see that, you know, post-COVID, we were at approximately 18% to 17% of our students were chronically absent, 10% more or more of the school year.

We have brought that down in the past two years to this year, this past year being 10.4% in large part to our attendance policy.

And same can be said for students that are chronically absent, 20% or more of the school year, which we're talking 36 days. So we're very proud of that information.

And if, Peter, you can go on to the next slide, you can see that specifically this kind of gives you a different visual look of what we're talking about.

Particularly those days absent, 10 days or more has really been reduced percentage-wise.

And on the next chart, you can see that our average number of absences over the past couple of years has dropped pretty dramatically.

So this attendance policy that we instituted last year with the support of school committee in the district has really made a difference at the high school.

So we truly appreciate it. So I wanted to give you some info on some highlights from last year that we implemented.

If you could move to the next slide, Peter, I did want to mention, because I do think this is a point of confusion for some families, we did not want to create an attendance policy that didn't have some flexibility in it. We understand that things happen with families.

So we do have some restorative practices embedded in the student handbook.

And you can see here, we do a number of things in terms of students being able to make up that time.

We did a, we had summer school this year.

We had a summer enrichment program this year. We've done academic contracts.

We're willing to do some Saturday school programming.

But there will be way for students to earn back credits if they find themselves in a position where they exceeded the number of unexcused absences that they are allowed.

Now, remember, we have a whole slew of reasons why students can legitimately be considered absent and have it as an excused absence.

So when we say unexcused, we're talking no doctor's note, or it's not a college visit with documentation or a dentist, orthodontist, doctor, bereavement, driver's test for licensure, things of that nature.

So we do give a wide berth there.

And we also give a number of days because we recognize that families sometimes will keep a child home because they're not feeling well, but maybe not want to go to the doctor and choose that.

It is in line with most other schools in the Hockamock League, as well as other schools in and around the state.

In fact, there are many schools in Massachusetts, particularly schools that are really well regarded, are moving to a policy in which they don't even recognize excused or unexcused absences.

Brookline would be an example.

And they're following DESE's guidelines.

DESE does not distinguish between excused or unexcused absences.

So they just determine that this many absences, regardless of whether they're excused or unexcused, develops into chronic absenteeism.

So we are trying to create an environment where students want to be in the building and create structures for them that we can get them there and also create restorative practices for them and understanding that families are under situations sometimes out of their control.

And we want to help support them to get their credits back if there was a case in which they would lose some.

If you want to move on, Peter, that would be great.

Kristen, this is after 10 absences, correct?

Correct.

This is 10 unexcused.

Yep.

So, hi, Avi.

Hey, I have a clarifying question on that.

Sure. So I know we say 10. Is there, is it true that if there were five absences in a, in a one semester class that, that they would, it would be similar in penalty to 10 classes, 10 days over the year?

It is relative.

So you could lose, um, a half a credit, um, or a full credit depending on how many days that you miss. Um, and so, you know, we, again, we recognize that some students might fall into that situation for one reason or another.

And that's why we've embedded those restorative practices.

And we're willing to speak with families at any point to, to set those things up with them, uh, to help their students succeed.

Okay.

Thank you for that clarification.

Yep.

So these are some of the changes to the handbook this year. Um, some are more, uh, you know, substantive than others.

Um, and they are, we've given the page numbers here, which, uh, have been submitted to the school committee, our red line, uh, draft of the new handbook.

But if you go to the next page, we can start.

One of the first things was we wanted to add some language regarding vandalism in the restrooms.

We have seen a number of instances in the past two years in which the vape detectors have been, um, vandalized or, or broken.

And obviously these are students in there that are trying not to be caught, uh, while vaping. So we wanted to put some intentional language in there regarding damaging or tampering with those devices, which would include some financial responsibility for a cost of repairs if a student was caught.

Um, so that was one of the changes we did regarding restrooms.

Next slide.

Um, one of the, uh, attendance, um, changes that we wanted to make or just additions we wanted to clarify, uh, with stronger language that we recognize that a number of students have chronic medical conditions.

I would give an example of, say, migraines, for example.

And oftentimes what we will do is at the beginning of a school year, we'll get a doctor's note from that family.

And that way that family is not having to go back to the doctor time after time after time if that student is suffering with migraines because we have that documentation.

So we have shored up the language there to be as clear as possible.

Uh, generally speaking, once we get that information at the beginning of the year, we're good.

Uh, but there, we may be, you know, asking for additional documentation, um, at some point during the year, uh, depending.

Uh, but we just want to make sure that those, that documentation remains current. So that deals with chronic medical conditions and we added that onto the, uh, attendance policy with some more clear language.

Next slide.

This was newly added section regarding field trips.

We wanted to make sure we were very clear with students, uh, as well as faculty and parents and families in terms of having students participate.

As you know, we have well over a hundred clubs at Sharon High School, which is an amazing thing.

And therefore we have a lot of field trips that students go on. And we want to make sure that students participating in field trips, um, must be in good academic and attendance standing.

What we don't want to do is create a situation where we have these wonderful field trips offered and students are missing so much time that academically they're really suffering in the long run.

So we didn't have field trip language in the handbook.

So we have had looked at a number of different schools and we developed this language.

It's on this page.

Um, and please note at the bottom there that no student will be denied the opportunity to participate in a field trip due to inability to pay, which is, you know, I believe Adam, you had asked a question regarding, uh, fees. So we made sure we embedded that there as well. Uh, next slide.

And this is just additional information regarding overnight trips as well.

So we just clarified it more for both families and students.

Senior privileges.

Senior privileges. This is something new that we started last year in meeting with senior leadership over the past two years.

Um, in my tenure here as principal, one of the things that seniors really wanted to do was start to bring back some privileges for seniors.

That had kind of gone by the wayside.

And one of the things that we thought about when we created the new schedule that started last year, where we moved ACEs to the end of the day was a privilege in which seniors in good standing could in fact leave the building with permission from their parents and their families.

Um, during that ACEs period of that last 20 minutes of school.

And it turned out to be very successful last year.

Seniors, seniors loved it. Uh, it actually, you know, worked out well.

So many of them are either members of sports teams or clubs, organizations, theater, and it, it really allowed them some extra time to get themselves ready and prepared.

As you know, we, um, get out later than almost every school.

I believe every school in the Hockamock league gets dismissed earlier than us. So, uh, for like athletic tournaments and such, sometimes, uh, it has been difficult.

You know, kids are trying to turn over, get on those buses. If we have away games ACEs at the end of the day has really helped with that endeavor, but the senior privileges, uh, is something that we wanted to create, to build culture in our school.

And so we wanted to make sure that we embedded that information in the handbook because it wasn't there last year. We started at mid-year.

Graduation requirements.

The, the reason essentially that we made some changes to this was based on the, the vote last year to eliminate MCAS as a graduation requirement.

So you can see we crossed out MCAS and we're moving towards local competency determination.

We're actually meeting tomorrow as a district to discuss this further based on new DESE guidelines.

But as it stands right now, and this is in line with most schools in Massachusetts in the yellow, you can see in the bottom that as it stands right now, Sharon high school is looking for students passing both English nine and 10 are an equivalent algebra and geometry are equivalent biology physics or chemistry.

And that's in line with the testing that they would have done or had to pass for MCAS.

So we will be meeting and discussing tomorrow.

What, uh, the department of education wants school systems to do regarding competency determination.

And if we do have to make any changes to this, we will make sure that we bring that to your attention.

National honor society.

We did make a change, um, to the, uh, GPA required to apply for national honor society.

We did this to be more in line with the national standards.

The national standards, uh, currently suggest, um, uh, 85 or higher for students.

And we had, uh, originally a number of years ago at Sharon high school, it was 5.3.

And then it got lowered to 5.0, which on our weighted scale was equivalent to a 79. And so what we were looking to do to bring it back to 2 point, uh, I'm sorry, 5.25, which is an equivalent of an 80, essentially an 83 average in order to apply for national honor society.

So it's still a little below what the national organization suggests.

So that gives some opportunity for students, but we are also making it, um, more in line with other schools throughout the state and the country, whereby approximately 10 to 12% of student body, um, are members of national honor society.

Next slide.

Um, mid-year and final exams.

One of the things that we've been examining for the past couple of years is how we roll out mid-year exams and whether or not they were really fruitful.

And we were getting enough information from them to inform instruction.

And what we really kind of came to the conclusion was they were really post-mortem of what was happening in the classroom.

One of the district goals, um, and in line with our school improvement plan was to create benchmarking exams that would allow for kind of immediate data information that we could review to inform our instruction.

In the present.

In the present. And we thought that was very important.

So one of the other, uh, pieces of information we looked at is the amount of time that we were losing based on the structure of the mid-year exams at the high school.

And based on the fact that we couldn't teach new information for a certain amount of time, pre-mid-year and the half days that were embedded for the mid-year exams, we were losing about 11 teaching days. And for a school that is as exceptional as Sharon high school is with as many students taking honors and advanced placement classes, losing that time on learning, uh, we believe is very significant.

We do recognize that students are preparing many times for college and post-secondary pursuits.

So we would be keeping final exams in place at 5%, uh, gives an opportunity for students to have that kind of college experience where they're getting a final exam at the end. But we would like to move more towards benchmarking exams throughout the year to use that data more productively for instruction.

Okay. And those are the substantive changes that we have. So if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them now.

Hi, Avi.

Thank you. Hi. Normally I take questions from other folks first. Uh, in this case, I just have a couple of questions and I thought, I thought one of them might be pressing enough to go first. Um, all right.

Question one, how many credits would have to be lost in senior year in order to not, I saw that it requires 20 credits to be earned in senior year in order to be part of commencement.

How many credits would have to be lost in order to arrive at that number for an average student?

To arrive at 20?

To arrive at 20. Okay.

So if, uh, if a student is essentially taking, um, six classes, um, I'm just doing the math in my head on the fly.

Sorry.

Success.

Essentially students can be earning, you know, are earning anywhere between like 40 and 60 credits in a given year. So really most students at Sharon high school are graduating well over the amount of credits needed, which is 102.

So, uh, if you have a student, you know, earning 20 credits in first semester or 25 credits, first semester, 25 second semester.

I mean, they would, they would have to be failing numerous classes or their attendance.

I mean, would have to be so bad that they're losing two credits per class.

But even that we would be hard pressed if they, you know, that's saying like they had great attendance in grades nine, 10, and 11. We'd be hard pressed to, to not graduate them as a result of that. So, um, it's more the overall effect of, of, of that. It's not particular courses, but the overall effect of, Hey, you're losing credits collectively.

And if you're somebody that in grades nine, 10, 11, and 12 has had poor attendance and has never kind of turned the corner with that, then it could affect you. Uh, but like I mentioned, most students are well over 102 credits when they graduate.

Okay. And then it, if you, so I understand that, you know, from previous discussions we've had here at the table and also in private that, you know, for some of the folks who have been reaching out to the school committee, on behalf of, you know, their students who are, you know, participate in extracurricular activities that are not school sponsored.

But I think that we'd all agree have tremendous value, uh, certainly for those students, for the social emotional, but also for their opportunities post high school.

Um, you know, that, that we're not, we're not offering opportunity for those to be excused absences.

I would ask it, is it something you would consider to accept some, some form of proof or set some standard, not, not to excuse those, but to remove some of the penalties we saw here tonight here to be, to be blunt.

I guess for me, I can, I can accept and support the credit aspect of it and the unexcused aspect of it, but seeing that there are students who, you know, are above board being, you know, upfront with us from the day they walk through our high school that they pursue, you know, for example, say somebody was trying to become an Olympus, Olympic gymnast.

That person would be spending a tremendous amount of time outside of school for specific reasons at times. And if they were doing certain things to try to take care, take advantage of the restorative practices, they might still end up in a situation where they had five absences and therefore couldn't take part in senior, uh, privileges.

For me, that feels just being honest here, punitive and, and uncomfortable for a student who maybe is actually burning the candle at both ends to be kind of what Sharon, I think would wants from our student, right?

Somebody who is, is doing what they can to reach a certain grade point average and also pursuing something that they, that, that really matters to them and very well might put them in a position to, to reflect very positively on our community.

For me, I I'm very supportive.

I can be very supportive of most of the aspects of this, but seeing that punitive aspect for me, I think that could have an unintended consequence for kids who are doing, I think we would all agree the right thing.