Agenda
[0:00]
Call to Order
[0:13]
Roll Call
[0:30]
Pledge of Allegiance
[0:57]
Agenda Approval
[1:03]
Citizens' Forum
[1:34]
Approval of Minutes
[1:55]
Superintendent's Report
[3:50]
Consent Agenda
[5:03]
Student Report
[6:09]
Financial Report
[8:39]
Policies - Changes - Proposals
[9:39]
Policy Adoption
[12:18]
FY2028 Draft Budget Preparation Adoption Schedule
[13:35]
Peer Recovery Model Research Proposal
[35:11]
Coherence Counts Research Proposal
[51:30]
Dover School District and The Granite YMCA Childcare MOU
[52:27]
Dover Paraeducators' Association Collective Bargaining Agreement (2026-2029)
[56:31]
Sports Injury Action Plan Review
[1:00:04]
AI Plan Draft and Presentation
[1:24:20]
End of Year Academic Data
[2:04:30]
NHSBA Policy Proposals
[2:15:27]
Submission and Payment of Bills
[2:16:01]
Committee Reports
[2:24:05]
School Board Matters of Interest
[2:25:59]
Citizens' Forum - Reopened
[2:26:11]
Adjournment
Transcript
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[0:00]
All right.
[0:03]
Calling to order regular meeting on Monday,
[0:07]
September 14th at 7:00 pm.
[0:10]
Can I please have a roll call? You may.
[0:14]
Good evening everybody. Robin,
[0:16]
Michelle Clancy here. Craig Flynn is present.
[0:19]
Maggie Fogarty here.
[0:21]
Micaela.
[0:23]
Elizabeth Goldman here.
[0:25]
Seana Berkley Hallberg here.
[0:27]
Okay.
[0:29]
Craig, would you please do this in the Pledge
[0:31]
of Allegiance?
[0:37]
I pledge allegiance
[0:38]
to the flag of the United States of America.
[0:41]
And to the Republic for which it stands.
[0:44]
One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty
[0:48]
and justice for all.
[0:57]
Can I please have a motion
[0:58]
to approve tonight's agenda?
[1:03]
Seana and Liz seconds.
[1:05]
Any discussion?
[1:07]
All those in favor?
[1:08]
Motion passes 6 to 0.
[1:11]
At this time, opening citizens forum.
[1:14]
Citizens forum is the opportunity for community members, business owners,
[1:18]
property owners, parents of students from sending schools to speak.
[1:22]
Comments will be limited to five minutes.
[1:25]
And please teach your name and address for the record.
[1:34]
Seeing no one at this time
[1:36]
suspending Citizens Forum,
[1:40]
can I please have a motion
[1:41]
to approve the minutes from our August meetings?
[1:45]
So moved.
[1:45]
Michelle and Maggie seconds.
[1:48]
Any discussion? All those in favor?
[1:51]
Motion passes 7 to 0.
[1:56]
And then moving on to
[1:57]
our Superintendent's Report.
[2:00]
The only thing I wanted to flag for you is I did put in there for you
[2:04]
the years of service and the names of our staff
[2:07]
who have reached 20, 25, 25 plus years of service for the district.
[2:11]
So, I just wanted to recognize them.
[2:14]
There are a lot of collective years and a lot of collective wisdom there.
[2:18]
The other thing I would flag, and it's on your consent agenda,
[2:21]
but it's also in my report, there were some nominations.
[2:25]
Not nominations. I'm sorry.
[2:26]
Some, donations made.
[2:29]
And I just wanted to flag that there's an annual golf tournament
[2:33]
that's sponsored by Nootro, and that's a company owned by two former
[2:36]
Dover High students.
[2:38]
And it benefits our unified athletics program.
[2:41]
And they raised over $4,000 to go directly to unified athletics.
[2:45]
So we're really thankful to Teddy Lipinski and Judah Payeur
[2:49]
who have made that possible.
[2:51]
And they do that annually and they do a fantastic job.
[2:53]
So you.
[2:54]
Want to say the total amount that was fundraised.
[2:57]
$4,267.34.
[3:00]
That's awesome. Thank you. Yeah.
[3:03]
Okay.
[3:04]
Any questions for Dr. Boston on the superintendent's report?
[3:09]
I'll just say I thought the years of service was really cool
[3:11]
because 25 years ago, I was at that school, so to see,
[3:16]
Eric Goodman,
[3:17]
our athletic trainer, who's amazing is the name that stood out to me the most.
[3:21]
So it was it was really good to see him still on there.
[3:26]
I think he's a great guy.
[3:27]
He helped me through several injuries when I played football here.
[3:30]
But no, it was really cool to see that and look through some of those names
[3:33]
and think back to, you know, the first time I met some of those people.
[3:37]
I noticed the city council does it monthly and we hire everybody annually.
[3:42]
So I'll just keep doing that annually so you all can see the names
[3:45]
and recognize them. Great. Thank you.
[3:49]
Okay.
[3:50]
Moving on to the consent agenda.
[3:52]
Can I please have a motion to approve the consent agenda
[3:56]
with the amended nominations list that we received on our desks?
[4:00]
So moved.
[4:01]
Michelle and Seana. Second.
[4:04]
Any discussion?
[4:06]
Always really happy to see people replacing
[4:09]
open positions, especially for para educators.
[4:12]
Yeah.
[4:14]
And I wanted to ask if board members can join the trip to Italy.
[4:18]
Because it looks awesome.
[4:21]
I think we all should chaperon. Yeah.
[4:24]
I did want to note for you in the packet
[4:27]
the, the permission slip at the very end
[4:33]
has the date of February vacation on it.
[4:36]
That changed from the time of their initial approval.
[4:39]
So it's actually April vacation break.
[4:41]
So Mr.
[4:42]
Driscoll's letter in support is correct. Okay.
[4:44]
Thank you.
[4:45]
But in a year, date shifted a. Little bit.
[4:47]
Any additional discussion?
[4:51]
All those in favor?
[4:54]
I can pass this 7 to 0.
[4:58]
Do we have a new student?
[5:00]
Do we?
[5:01]
We get a new reappointed student each.
[5:03]
We have Connor Sprague stuff. Okay. And he is not here.
[5:06]
But he left me some notes if you'd like me to share.
[5:09]
Awesome. Thank you.
[5:10]
So he wanted you all to know that all four fall sports
[5:14]
have started up and have been going hard since August 17th.
[5:19]
Freshman orientation went very smoothly.
[5:22]
Clubs like the National Honor
[5:24]
Society will be starting up in the upcoming weeks.
[5:28]
This year's homecoming theme is A Night in Rio.
[5:31]
That is September 26th, and the homecoming
[5:34]
football game will be against Keene High School this year.
[5:38]
Students wanted to make homecoming a chance to give back.
[5:41]
So the students, part of planning homecoming, decided
[5:45]
to donate a dollar of every ticket sold and cuts off.
[5:49]
So I can't see where it's being donated to.
[5:51]
I apologize. I'll find that for you.
[5:54]
Classes have been had a good start up
[5:57]
the first couple of weeks, and, that's what he shared tonight.
[6:01]
And he hopes to be back. But at soccer practice to me. Yes.
[6:05]
Great.
[6:06]
Thank you.
[6:07]
Connor.
[6:09]
Okay.
[6:10]
And moving on to our financial report.
[6:13]
It's new format.
[6:15]
Yes. You see a new format that we have this month.
[6:19]
I tried I, I presented the information in two different ways.
[6:23]
The start, and then the revenue kind of comes out the same.
[6:26]
But I wanted to put percentages on the right and kind of make it
[6:30]
a little more understandable and readable.
[6:32]
To the average person.
[6:35]
So I didn't know if this was something you were looking for to continue.
[6:39]
Do you like do you want a broken down a different way?
[6:41]
Do you like this way to know.
[6:45]
I will say I like the percentage used.
[6:49]
At the end of each table.
[6:51]
I think that gives a nice visual illustration of where we're at.
[6:56]
I really also
[6:57]
like the table that shows the budget broken out by each location.
[7:01]
I don't think we've seen it presented that way before.
[7:06]
And, you know, sometimes online rhetoric is we are
[7:09]
we paid like half our budget is to administration and administrators.
[7:13]
So I think it's really great to see that actually,
[7:17]
the majority of our budget is allocated to the high school.
[7:21]
But I really liked that format
[7:23]
and seeing it broken out that way.
[7:27]
Robin, just relative to that,
[7:30]
the budget item that's called district wide, what does that cover.
[7:34]
Which are you on the second.
[7:37]
On the,
[7:39]
where the the second, the second, second location.
[7:41]
District wide is basically anything that's not, set to a school.
[7:46]
That could be our IT department, that could be maintenance, that could be,
[7:51]
any facilities.
[7:52]
Facilities. Okay. Yep. Would be under there as well.
[7:55]
So food service is also district wide.
[7:58]
So thank you like that.
[8:00]
But that's not attached to a school directly or a program directly.
[8:03]
Right.
[8:07]
Any other questions
[8:09]
or feedback on the financial report? No.
[8:12]
Very legible. Yes. It is really helpful.
[8:15]
And just so you know, when you see 631 and 632 on the second one,
[8:19]
the high school and storage buildings, those are all those are
[8:22]
electric bills for animal sciences and our maintenance building.
[8:26]
So it's not if you wondering why it's such a small number, that's really all it is.
[8:31]
All the other parts are included in other areas of the budget.
[8:35]
Makes sense.
[8:36]
Thank you.
[8:40]
Okay, moving on to policies,
[8:44]
I please have a motion to.
[8:51]
Table our policy changes at first reading.
[8:55]
So moved. Michelle and Maggie.
[8:57]
Seconds.
[8:57]
Any discussion or comments on those,
[9:02]
policy revisions?
[9:06]
Looks like we are,
[9:07]
clarifying
[9:11]
and streamlining some of the policies quite a bit.
[9:14]
You know, one of the first things that Brian noticed when he came here was
[9:18]
how low our threshold was with bidding.
[9:20]
So he's been working with Josh Wyatt, the city attorney,
[9:23]
to bring our policy in alignment with the city's policy.
[9:27]
And then the others are changes due to legislation.
[9:32]
Thank you.
[9:33]
Any additional discussion?
[9:35]
Just that the policy committee did review.
[9:37]
All of these as well to.
[9:39]
Right? Right.
[9:40]
All those in favor?
[9:43]
Motion passes 7 to 0.
[9:45]
Moving on to
[9:48]
our first round of policy adoptions.
[9:50]
These will be policy adoptions
[9:51]
at first and second reading, for legislative changes.
[9:56]
And I have a motion to approve those policies at first and second reading. Liz
[10:03]
and and Micaela seconds.
[10:06]
Any discussion on
[10:09]
those policy changes?
[10:10]
Those all looked to be legislative related.
[10:13]
They are.
[10:13]
And these are more timely.
[10:17]
They deal with students and students under phase
[10:20]
who might be wanting to take some classes here or bullying
[10:23]
or searches, and we really want to have these approved and in place.
[10:26]
Yeah.
[10:28]
Can I ask a question about JFBC
[10:33]
under a one?
[10:37]
What if a participating students
[10:40]
shall be permitted access to what?
[10:43]
What does it mean specifically?
[10:44]
Instruction up to 50%.
[10:46]
Is that 50% of an average course load or.
[10:49]
50% of US school day.
[10:51]
So they can take 50% of a course
[10:53]
load and not and not be removed from the EFA roster.
[10:57]
Okay. Wow. That's a lot.
[10:59]
That's in the response.
[11:01]
Direct response to new legislation that just passed.
[11:03]
Okay. So last. Have no say in it.
[11:06]
Yeah.
[11:07]
Last school year it was if you were an EFA student
[11:10]
because you had taken the EFA funds and no adequacy was blowing to the district.
[11:15]
We charge parents fees.
[11:16]
Your old policy for those classes.
[11:18]
Now, we are not allowed to charge fees up to 50%.
[11:23]
And this, for those who are keeping count, is an unfunded mandate.
[11:27]
Yes, yes.
[11:28]
What unfunded mandate by the state.
[11:30]
And in some ways a defunded mandate because you're giving out the EFA dollars?
[11:33]
Yeah, I would agree with that.
[11:38]
Okay.
[11:38]
So it's as irritating as I thought it was I just.
[11:41]
It is.
[11:42]
Yeah.
[11:42]
Yeah.
[11:46]
Any additional discussion.
[11:48]
All those in favor.
[11:50]
Motion passes 7 to 0.
[11:53]
And then lastly motion
[11:55]
to approve policies in their second reading.
[11:58]
So moved Michelle and Seana
[12:01]
seconds any additional discussion on those policies.
[12:05]
We reviewed them at our last meeting.
[12:08]
No. All those in favor?
[12:10]
Motion passes 7 to 0.
[12:14]
Okay.
[12:14]
Moving on to all the business.
[12:18]
Just revisiting our proposed, draft budget
[12:24]
preparation, schedule for our upcoming budget season.
[12:30]
Or do we need to vote on this? Tonight is finalized.
[12:32]
Yes. I'd like to finalize. Yeah.
[12:34]
Okay. Sorry.
[12:35]
I'm still scrolling through the 500 page.
[12:38]
I know.
[12:40]
For tonight, 109.
[12:41]
Thank you.
[12:45]
So. Okay,
[12:46]
so we reviewed the proposed budget schedule at our last meeting.
[12:49]
I think we didn't have any significant changes.
[12:52]
We were in agreement with the timeline that proposed
[12:56]
recognizing that some of the city dates
[13:00]
and deadlines will change as they finalize their schedule.
[13:03]
So motion to approve the,
[13:08]
the budget adoption
[13:09]
schedule for fiscal year 2028.
[13:13]
Seana and Liz seconds.
[13:15]
Any additional discussion?
[13:17]
Grateful that we're not doing public hearings over a school vacation this year.
[13:22]
I know this is in response to a lot of feedback from the public, and.
[13:26]
Those are tentative.
[13:27]
But I have reiterated our request to the city manager's office
[13:31]
as of last week as well.
[13:33]
I appreciate that. Thank you.
[13:36]
All those in favor?
[13:37]
Motion passes 7 to 0.
[13:40]
A and then diving into new business.
[13:45]
First up is a research proposal
[13:47]
for the peer recovery model.
[13:50]
So we have Bob Faghan here.
[13:52]
From Live Free Recovery.
[13:54]
Bob runs a peer recovery program at Dover High School.
[13:58]
He is also our licensed alcohol and drug counselor there.
[14:02]
He does amazing work for the district and has for years,
[14:06]
and I am pretty sure that the hours he builds us
[14:10]
for isn't even close to the hours he's actually providing.
[14:13]
Linda, I'm probably not supposed to actually say that out loud.
[14:16]
That's Bob's wife with him.
[14:17]
But Bob is going to come up and talk a little
[14:20]
about what he's asking permission to do.
[14:22]
His program has been recognized by the center for excellence
[14:25]
as an innovative program,
[14:27]
and they're looking to do some research to start to look at how they might
[14:30]
replicate that. So.
[14:34]
Great.
[14:35]
Everybody, welcome.
[14:36]
Thank you for having us tonight.
[14:39]
I'm just here to help with the slides. Yes.
[14:41]
My wingman.
[14:43]
Right.
[14:44]
So, yeah.
[14:44]
Like Dr. Boston said, we've been doing,
[14:47]
we've been doing services with the district for about 14,
[14:50]
15 years now back in the old building
[14:52]
since post-pandemic we've been doing a peer group as well.
[14:56]
We always kind of used with dovish, but it was used more as an afterthought.
[15:01]
So now that they finished talking with me or they're done with the group,
[15:05]
read about them to keep coming to kind of because
[15:08]
in New Hampshire there's not a lot out there for people
[15:10]
kind of need that higher level of care for adolescents.
[15:13]
So that's how it evolved.
[15:14]
During the pandemic, during the shutdown, my office was allowed to stay open
[15:19]
and we would bring dovish students who were at high risk. So,
[15:24]
the social worker at the school,
[15:26]
they would recommend students we would have brought to our office
[15:29]
and our peers would at the time would I noticed
[15:34]
they would come wandering over to me and be like, can you check on Jen?
[15:37]
She's having an issue.
[15:38]
And it kind of started to click that.
[15:40]
Maybe that we're missing something by not getting them more involved.
[15:44]
And over the years, it's kind of evolved into what you're going to see here today.
[15:47]
It has been accepted by the Center of Excellence as an integrated program,
[15:52]
which means, they end the drug and alcohol services.
[15:56]
Believe what we're doing here
[15:57]
in Dover should be replicated across other schools in New Hampshire.
[16:01]
And the data we're going to talk about tonight is all observational.
[16:04]
But we'll explain that a little bit more when we get to the slide.
[16:07]
And then any questions please jump in.
[16:10]
And he is a very. Humble man.
[16:11]
It's a big deal that they've been recognized.
[16:16]
So kind of the whole premise
[16:18]
his students notice we actually call this the awareness response gap.
[16:21]
Students are going to notice things before it gets to us as staff or as adults.
[16:26]
So think about where we were in school.
[16:29]
We would always tell our friends things before we'd go to adult.
[16:32]
Students don't want to go to adults
[16:33]
because they're afraid they're going to get, their friend in trouble.
[16:37]
They're afraid they're going to be ostracized by their friend group.
[16:40]
So what this whole peer program does and what the training we're going
[16:43]
to be given to students is, hopefully in what
[16:47]
we've seen over the last couple of years is it's really kind of shrunk that gap.
[16:51]
So we're getting information, a lot quicker now
[16:54]
because the students are trusting
[16:56]
us and staff to bring us information sooner than they would have.
[17:02]
So basically we're going to train students.
[17:04]
So we want to make it very clear they're not doing counseling.
[17:07]
They're not doing therapy.
[17:09]
They never act alone.
[17:11]
I'm always the editor in the group.
[17:14]
I am there when they're meeting with the students.
[17:16]
So when we do an intake with the student, I try to have a peer there.
[17:20]
If it's on a with that class.
[17:22]
So the peer can kind of explain their role.
[17:24]
But they are not counselors.
[17:27]
They will run into kids in the hallway and they will hear things.
[17:30]
And that's part of what actually works for this program.
[17:33]
But they are trained, it is pounded into their heads constantly.
[17:38]
What to do with that information?
[17:42]
Really
[17:43]
this we're not going to let the students handle this on their own.
[17:46]
They're not going to be by themselves.
[17:47]
They're always going to be supervised.
[17:52]
So again, here's what it is.
[17:54]
It's the student's going to notice.
[17:55]
They're going to have a conversation with the other student.
[17:58]
And then they're going to bring it to a trusted adult
[18:00]
who is then going to the level of care that it needs to happen.
[18:03]
The right kind of help is going to happen.
[18:05]
Is it just a referral to the group?
[18:07]
Do we need to bring it to the social worker
[18:09]
because there might be suicidal ideation?
[18:11]
So the students not dealing that on their own,
[18:15]
they're making their fellow student more comfortable coming to us
[18:18]
so we can help decide where the help belongs.
[18:21]
For those of you
[18:22]
who are familiar with the NAMI Connect suicide prevention program, this.
[18:26]
This is very much like that warm hand off to the next right supporting person.
[18:31]
Great, great.
[18:33]
Again, this is repetitive, but adult supervision is always.
[18:38]
And there's clear rules of escalation.
[18:42]
What do you do if this happens?
[18:44]
Who do you come to?
[18:45]
And even this year
[18:46]
we're going to try to train staff into what do you do when a student does this?
[18:51]
So now there's no confusion where, maybe a student goes to their favorite teacher.
[18:57]
And now but now the teachers got to have clear.
[19:00]
And actually, the high school does an excellent job of this anyway.
[19:03]
But, if there's a gray area, there's going to be no question whatsoever.
[19:08]
So especially with the substance abuse issue, I addressed the staff today
[19:12]
at the staff meeting.
[19:13]
They all know now how to get Ahold of Bob if if a student is bringing
[19:17]
substance abuse concerns.
[19:21]
Five simple
[19:22]
principles recognize, supervise, clarify.
[19:25]
What's the timing? We don't want to wait some of these things.
[19:27]
We really can't afford to wait on.
[19:29]
Some of the things brought to me last year.
[19:32]
We're considered critical in crisis, in the moment, without a peer,
[19:36]
something that we are able to intervene on immediately.
[19:40]
And direct the help in the right direction could have snowballed.
[19:44]
Until now, it's an actual crisis.
[19:47]
Crisis where staff is involved.
[19:49]
They're looking for hospitalization, something like that.
[19:54]
So this is all based on peer reviewed research,
[19:57]
the research on peer influence.
[20:00]
There's a lot of it out there.
[20:01]
The big thing that this program will address,
[20:05]
that was something I came across constantly in the research
[20:09]
is what they call school connectedness and not do the kids have,
[20:14]
are they playing on a team or do they have good school spirit?
[20:19]
It's more about do they believe the adults
[20:21]
in the building care about them and their welfare?
[20:25]
And if they do, the research is very,
[20:28]
very clear that that helps with mental health, substance abuse issues.
[20:33]
That's where this program is going to come in.
[20:35]
And when students see the older students, the peers trusting staff,
[20:40]
that kind of gives staff instant credibility.
[20:43]
Maybe we can go talk to Bob.
[20:45]
Maybe we can go talk to principal if we have something going on.
[20:50]
So where it stands, where you recognize as an innovative program,
[20:54]
Keene State College has been,
[20:58]
contracted by the Center of Excellence
[21:00]
and your drug and alcohol service to kind of oversee.
[21:03]
So, for lack of a better, the,
[21:07]
analogy I use with the curriculum committee was
[21:10]
if dove is doing a dissertation on this, Keene State College is the advisor.
[21:15]
So everything that I put in front of them on this is what we want to check for.
[21:20]
This is the satisfaction survey I'm going to use with staff.
[21:23]
That's all gone through Keene State College and been approved.
[21:28]
So it's really passive operational.
[21:31]
Everything that we check for is up there.
[21:33]
Referrals, how many referrals
[21:34]
where those referrals come from, are they self referred itself referred to.
[21:38]
They go to a counselor or did they get self referred
[21:41]
because one of our peers or other students has said them?
[21:44]
Last year we had 43 self referrals, 26
[21:48]
I believe, or a direct result of a peer or someone in our peer group
[21:54]
telling them that they should come see us.
[21:59]
Escalations.
[22:00]
Again, we've talked about where are we going to bring that?
[22:04]
We're going to we're going to we're going to document that.
[22:06]
So how many times did it come to me where I felt like
[22:10]
they needed to go somewhere else?
[22:11]
How many times did it come to another staff member
[22:14]
where they thought they'd had to go somewhere else, help seeking behaviors?
[22:18]
Basically just what it says.
[22:20]
Are they reaching out to help?
[22:21]
Last year we had, I think it was 87.
[22:23]
Time for student contacted me off balance
[22:25]
because they were having they were struggling.
[22:27]
That's things we going to keep track of
[22:31]
that has significantly increased since we started the peer group.
[22:34]
So we're thinking that will happen again.
[22:36]
And then the service engagement, whether a referral led to real support.
[22:41]
We had 98 referrals last year, probably 20 of those kids.
[22:45]
I never saw him after the first time.
[22:46]
So that's a referral.
[22:48]
Is that really engaging?
[22:50]
No. Does it put our face in front of them?
[22:53]
And maybe so when they're sophomores and juniors, they'll remember,
[22:56]
let's go talk to that guy we met freshman year.
[22:59]
Maybe, but that's not we're not going to count
[23:01]
that as engagement for purposes of of the study.
[23:06]
Then we keep track of basic intake demographics.
[23:09]
Fidelity will be given to like, did this run the way it was supposed to?
[23:14]
So, How we run the training with staff,
[23:19]
there'll be a list where they're going to check off.
[23:21]
Did Bob do this?
[23:22]
Did Bob do that?
[23:23]
Did Bob do that?
[23:24]
And then the only thing that isn't observational would be a satisfaction
[23:28]
survey.
[23:29]
There'd be one given to any staff that takes on training
[23:32]
to be one to any peer who does our training.
[23:36]
And then we always would like to give that at the end of the year,
[23:39]
people have participated in the group that would be voluntary
[23:43]
and it would be anonymous, and there'd be no repercussions
[23:45]
if they said, I don't want to do this.
[23:49]
So this is,
[23:50]
you know, basically we're growing the capacity.
[23:54]
It's already what we're doing is every year we're not looking to hire
[23:58]
a create more work for the councils that are already there.
[24:03]
I know for me, running a group, things were brought to me
[24:08]
multiple times last year that I was able to observe,
[24:11]
that I got to before my student really kind of chaos.
[24:15]
So it running that group 35 minutes a week during flex actually saves me time.
[24:21]
And then we can move.
[24:23]
Maybe all those students don't have to be weekly individual anymore.
[24:26]
Maybe they can just come to the group
[24:28]
and then I can see if they're kind of spiraling.
[24:31]
I can bring them back in.
[24:32]
And then with the peers they're going to observe in the hallway,
[24:34]
they're going to see, hey, she's skipping class, he's in the bathroom too much,
[24:38]
and then I'm going to rain that person back in.
[24:41]
That's it.
[24:42]
I do want to point out that,
[24:45]
we are in front of the board for a couple of reasons, but this program
[24:48]
has been running for a while in Dover, but we did bring it in front of Curriculum
[24:52]
Advisory Council during the summer, and it is an approved intervention,
[24:56]
for our system.
[24:58]
That was an anonymous vote for approval.
[25:02]
Any questions?
[25:04]
Do you have a question?
[25:05]
I was hearing you talk about the voluntary
[25:09]
survey and wondering,
[25:12]
for students who may be given
[25:14]
the survey, would parental permission be required?
[25:18]
Which kind of brought me to another question.
[25:21]
Which is do and family members always or
[25:25]
sometimes or never know that students are involved in this program.
[25:29]
So sometimes.
[25:30]
And the reason that is, is because you Hampshire law, anyone over 12 years old
[25:35]
can seek substance abuse treatment without parental consent.
[25:39]
So by law, if a student comes to me, I have to allow them to participate.
[25:43]
My goal with every one of those students is to get the families involved.
[25:47]
And it goes 1 or 2 ways, either the families, you know,
[25:51]
I'm afraid I'm going to get in trouble.
[25:52]
I love to hear that because I can work with that.
[25:55]
We do have some students who their home life is horrific.
[25:58]
We had one kid last year who was beaten so bad with a belt.
[26:03]
He had welts all over.
[26:04]
His parents did not know he was coming to me well until we reported
[26:08]
to DC, but.
[26:09]
So, yes, for that survey, it's not a clinical survey,
[26:13]
so we usually don't ask for parental consent only because of
[26:18]
if a student is there without a parent knowing.
[26:21]
If a parent does know, I would certainly be willing to ask for consent.
[26:26]
But that type of survey in New Hampshire does not require consent.
[26:30]
What I normally do is I would put the survey on the table, say,
[26:33]
you guys hold this out, did not put your name on it.
[26:35]
I leave the room and then the surveys have put there.
[26:38]
I have no idea who we answered who did it.
[26:42]
So I think if we're doing it in the school during the school day.
[26:46]
Yeah.
[26:46]
So the other thing about Bob is that we work really closely together
[26:51]
and have been for a couple of years, because some of the stuff he does is under
[26:54]
title for. So we can talk about the survey.
[26:56]
Yeah.
[26:56]
I would want to make sure we follow the, the law on that.
[27:00]
I appreciate what you're doing
[27:03]
is, is that way on purpose right.
[27:05]
Is to take down barriers for kids, which I think is great.
[27:08]
We just want to make sure we follow on our end too,
[27:11]
but also make sure you get good data for the work you're doing.
[27:14]
So I think we can work with that and make sure we're following
[27:16]
the the legal requirements.
[27:18]
And because it really is a big deal to have your work recognized like this.
[27:25]
Yeah.
[27:26]
And as far as the survey that kids would take for the training,
[27:30]
we're going to ask the parental consent for a student to do the peer training.
[27:34]
And I will make that part of the consent
[27:37]
survey afterwards. Okay.
[27:39]
I appreciate it. Thank you.
[27:40]
Does everyone do the peer training or just students who are interested?
[27:43]
So even the way I have done it is I've students
[27:48]
who keep coming, students who we're not looking for,
[27:52]
we're not looking for goody goody, for lack of a better word.
[27:55]
Are they honest?
[27:56]
When they get caught,
[27:57]
do they come to group and talk about it, or are they trying to blame their friends?
[28:02]
When the dean catches them doing something, do they give the Dean attitude
[28:06]
or do they accept it and own their stuff and take their punishment?
[28:11]
And we've had students over the years who we had one senior last year,
[28:15]
and I am not going to use her name, but she has given me consent to kind of
[28:19]
tell her freshman sophomore year, Junius
[28:22]
suspended every year for stuff senior year never got suspended.
[28:25]
And her attitude went from blaming the deans to,
[28:29]
giving them hugs.
[28:30]
A graduation last year so that she became a peer
[28:34]
because over her time,
[28:38]
we recognize that behavior the way it is now.
[28:41]
We have three seniors who have met that criteria.
[28:44]
They will do the training I'm going to look to because we're trying to expand.
[28:48]
I'm going to look to staff,
[28:49]
teachers, administrators, councils to recommend students.
[28:53]
They will get the training, but then this year they will be observed
[28:56]
of how they handle their role in the group and in the school community
[29:01]
to see if next year they qualify to become peer.
[29:05]
I ask a question.
[29:06]
How do you obviously a lot of there's a lot of precursors
[29:10]
to substance use disorder, right? And a lot of trauma.
[29:13]
A lot. Of.
[29:14]
A lot of narrow divergence.
[29:16]
So my question for you is with a peer model, how do you respect
[29:20]
confidentiality, especially when relationships have been,
[29:24]
fractured for a lot of people who use substances, they might have trust issues.
[29:28]
And then you're having peers report on other peers.
[29:31]
I'm just curious about how to protect the the people in your programs.
[29:36]
So anyone I meet with individually,
[29:41]
I don't offer the group to
[29:42]
automatically, if I think there's any significant trauma.
[29:46]
One of the things I want to see out of that respond immediately.
[29:49]
You have two girls in the group
[29:52]
now, unfortunately have
[29:55]
horrific trauma histories
[29:57]
before they come to the group and decide they want to come to the group.
[30:00]
I explained to them what it's about.
[30:02]
There are going to be peers.
[30:04]
If they see concerns, they're going to bring them to me.
[30:06]
And then before they come to the group, they sit down again with me and the peers.
[30:11]
These are your peers, his, you know, his your confidentiality.
[30:15]
However, if they see you struggling, they will come to me.
[30:18]
They will discuss, what your issues
[30:22]
are, what you've been through, what you talk about in group.
[30:25]
I've never had a peer violate confidentiality.
[30:29]
Last year, we did have a student in the group violate
[30:32]
somebody's confidentiality in a meeting to try to get herself out of trouble.
[30:38]
And she was discharged from the group immediately.
[30:40]
She wasn't allowed back. So that's kind of how we have.
[30:43]
But I'm very sensitive to that.
[30:45]
Absolutely. Because unfortunately, it's
[30:50]
it's so prevalent.
[30:51]
It's it's pretty sad.
[30:54]
Disgusting is the right word what some of these students have gone through. Oh.
[31:03]
Do you have another question?
[31:05]
It's fine.
[31:06]
Are you sure? Yeah.
[31:06]
I can reach out to you. I'm just.
[31:08]
I do this work clinically, so I'm just.
[31:11]
I'm just curious about stuff, but it's not anything for right now.
[31:14]
I mean, I can't even get consent from the students sitting in a group if you want.
[31:17]
Oh, amazing.
[31:18]
Yeah.
[31:19]
I just I my brain is just thinking about all of the, Yeah.
[31:23]
Just interesting.
[31:24]
No, there's, there's and it's
[31:27]
this group is well beyond just straight substance abuse.
[31:30]
And if you walked in,
[31:31]
you wouldn't even hug, wouldn't even recognize it as a substance use group
[31:35]
because the majority of the students that end up in that group
[31:39]
to see the mental health, disciplinary, academic, there's something else
[31:44]
that, needs to be addressed as well.
[31:49]
Yeah.
[31:51]
Okay. Thank you, thank you. Yeah.
[31:53]
Thank you.
[31:56]
So we need to know
[31:58]
we need to vote about whether or not we can,
[32:02]
kind of continue with this study
[32:05]
because this is a research project which we very much support.
[32:10]
So we need to make sure that that's approved by you all.
[32:13]
Okay. Just last call for questions.
[32:16]
Is there a duration for this study like a specific end date.
[32:19]
Yeah.
[32:20]
So I should have said this.
[32:21]
So right now we're in greater program at the end of this year.
[32:24]
We're
[32:26]
we're considered we're kind of a
[32:29]
I'm going to meet with Keene State next week
[32:31]
where we're going to be designated a promising practice, which is phase two.
[32:34]
I don't want to jinx it, but and then
[32:38]
the hope would be, not this year, at the end of next year,
[32:43]
if everything goes according to plan, we'd be designated a evidence based practice
[32:47]
nationally by the Bureau of Drug and Alcohol Services.
[32:51]
That's amazing.
[32:53]
So would your data collection be limited to this school year
[32:56]
or would it go into next?
[32:57]
So the hope would be next year.
[32:59]
I can come back and say, hey, we want to continue this again.
[33:02]
And if it goes well, then we'll be back next year.
[33:07]
If it doesn't, then you'll know why you don't see it.
[33:11]
I think it would be great to
[33:12]
have you back for just a little follow up, maybe towards the end of.
[33:15]
The year. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
[33:17]
I mean, I can even present those stats if you would like, at the end of the year
[33:22]
and kind of show.
[33:23]
You where it. Yeah.
[33:24]
Can you break out to like if you can.
[33:27]
Maybe kids that are in special education if that's possible.
[33:32]
So worried about the cell size on that.
[33:36]
Could I give a just a number rather than.
[33:38]
We have to see what the data looks like
[33:39]
before we can promise because of the enzymes.
[33:43]
Oh okay. Yeah. Yeah.
[33:46]
We just wouldn't want to mistakenly identify a.
[33:48]
Student. 100%.
[33:49]
The co-occurrence though for individuals that have hidden disabilities
[33:52]
for substance use disorders, disproportionate.
[33:55]
So a lot of people. Use.
[33:57]
A lot of people aren't identified.
[33:58]
And so my brain is going, I wouldn't want to miss a trauma.
[34:01]
Essentially important to understand, but so is neurodivergent in this population.
[34:07]
I actually have a grandson and a stepson, a virgin.
[34:10]
So that's something I make sure I try to stay right up on.
[34:12]
That's kind of what I was.
[34:13]
I would hate to miss any of that really crucial information that could be,
[34:17]
vulnerabilities to be in this population.
[34:21]
So yeah, and I will say numbers.
[34:23]
But we had several last year. Yeah.
[34:25]
That's what I would suspect.
[34:26]
But yeah obviously respecting there as well.
[34:30]
But yeah.
[34:32]
And this is a prevention based program.
[34:37]
Thank you thank you.
[34:38]
Thank you thank you.
[34:40]
You do.
[34:40]
Did you do the I'm.
[34:42]
Yeah I'll do a motion.
[34:45]
Can I please have a motion to approve the
[34:48]
or accept the peer recovery model research
[34:51]
program Seana and Maggie.
[34:54]
Second any additional discussion?
[34:56]
Just thank you so much for the work that you're doing.
[35:00]
It takes a very special person to work with kids in tough spots like that. So.
[35:04]
Thank you.
[35:05]
Yeah.
[35:06]
All those in favor? Motion passes 7 to 0.
[35:09]
You get to Art.
[35:10]
Thank you, thank you.
[35:13]
Okay, the next item is
[35:16]
the coherence counts research proposal, and it it doesn't look like we have.
[35:21]
Materials for that one. Do you want to speak. To that?
[35:23]
Yes. Director Krans will speak. To that. Thank you.
[35:26]
It's me again.
[35:27]
Jen Krans, Co-Director of Curriculum, Instruction and
[35:29]
Assessment.
[35:30]
The reason why you didn't have
[35:33]
the materials is because I actually met with them again.
[35:37]
Because I wanted to make sure I had all of the answers to the questions.
[35:40]
That's okay.
[35:41]
I just wanted to make sure I wasn't skipping over anything.
[35:44]
Yes. So this is a huge opportunity that came our way
[35:48]
a couple of years ago, and then we didn't have enough teachers to participate.
[35:51]
And then it came again in a different format.
[35:54]
And so this is the American Institutes for Research, AIR.
[35:57]
And they are conducting a study called Coherence Counts about supplemental
[36:03]
material for
[36:04]
our math curriculum at the middle level, which is Illustrative Mathematics.
[36:08]
This could not come at a better time for us, as we're sort of saying,
[36:12]
you know, we've gotten quite a bit out of the curriculum, but, you know,
[36:16]
let's work on getting our numbers heading with more growth.
[36:20]
So we're looking for opportunities to study what could help with that growth.
[36:25]
So AIR, the American Institutes for Research,
[36:28]
there, a nonprofit, a very large
[36:31]
nonprofit that is seen as a neutral, data driven partner.
[36:34]
They work with a lot of school districts on, a lot of different projects,
[36:39]
a lot of assessment projects.
[36:40]
But one of the biggest things that they do is to conduct studies,
[36:44]
some RCT studies, but, all different kinds of studies
[36:49]
to see the effectiveness of instructional practice particularly.
[36:53]
So, to say that I was excited,
[36:58]
is probably an understatement.
[37:00]
You curriculum people. Yeah.
[37:03]
I might have, really screamed in
[37:05]
Director Bickford here.
[37:08]
Okay.
[37:10]
So, the challenges that would be addressed by this project,
[37:13]
this project is happening across the country.
[37:17]
But, in schools of different sizes,
[37:20]
with the adoption of standards- based curriculum such as Illustrative
[37:25]
mathematics, teachers are finding that they have a broad spectrum of students
[37:30]
in their classrooms,
[37:31]
and they can have trouble meeting all of the needs at tier one.
[37:35]
A lot of you have heard this
[37:36]
before from me, from teachers at the Curriculum Council.
[37:40]
And so it's not always really easy to figure out how to support all earners
[37:44]
in a mathematics classroom, to maintain the rigor,
[37:48]
to make sure that tier one is being addressed,
[37:50]
and also to meet students where they are and fill those gaps.
[37:54]
Teachers report widespread report.
[37:58]
And these are AIR slides.
[38:00]
Just so you know, if they say AIR at the bottom,
[38:01]
I didn't make them, they report needing additional practice problems.
[38:06]
This is a huge thing that comes to me all the time as teachers saying
[38:11]
there's just not enough practice in any curriculum these days.
[38:14]
They report difficulties implementing digital math products
[38:18]
effectively because they have this,
[38:22]
standards aligned curriculum and they need coherence.
[38:26]
So coherence in math curriculum is everything.
[38:28]
It's the way that we build upon the progressions so that students are able
[38:32]
to really get those skills in a timely manner.
[38:37]
And so this project is meant to address that.
[38:40]
So they have two they have two products
[38:45]
that they're testing out alongside Illustrative Mathematics.
[38:49]
Both of these products are,
[38:53]
computer programing, their computer programs.
[38:57]
One is called Snorkl.
[38:59]
And the. Other yes.
[39:01]
And the other is called MATHia.
[39:03]
So this study is interesting because a lot of times when you do a study
[39:07]
with an organization like AIR, they might say,
[39:10]
well, we're going to do a random sampling and only some of your students
[39:13]
will participate and some will do business as usual.
[39:16]
And, we know that that's a good study model,
[39:19]
but we don't love it because we're like, oh, we got to leave some kids out.
[39:23]
This study is not like that.
[39:25]
They're going to compare data from the previous year to this year
[39:28]
so everyone can participate, which I was pretty pumped about that.
[39:32]
So what they're studying is interesting.
[39:36]
They're studying not only how effective
[39:40]
the supplement is, but also do teachers like it?
[39:43]
Do they use it?
[39:44]
How does it work for them? How is it coherent?
[39:46]
Do kids like it and does it help with the problem.
[39:50]
So they have this study to do that
[39:56]
math.
[39:56]
So I went to the middle school and said, hey, does anyone want to do this?
[40:01]
We only need one grade level with all three people to agree.
[40:05]
And they immediately all said, we will all do it.
[40:06]
We're excited, let's do it.
[40:08]
So we have the whole six through eight team ready to go.
[40:11]
They're pretty excited and therefore I am very excited.
[40:16]
And they met and they looked at Snorkl and they looked at MATHia.
[40:19]
And they feel that MATHia is the better choice for them.
[40:22]
They know that it can fit into their instructional time
[40:25]
and they feel like it will address their needs.
[40:27]
So MATHia is the platform that they would be using.
[40:31]
It does have an agreement for student data privacy
[40:34]
with other states, I'm sorry, with other school districts in this state.
[40:38]
So I'm confident that we'll have an agreement as well.
[40:41]
And it's very strongly aligned to Illustrative Mathematics.
[40:44]
So there's not going to be a lot of drifting.
[40:48]
Sometimes when you're supplementing, you're really trying to pick and
[40:51]
choose, and it can be really
[40:53]
tricky speaking from experience there.
[40:57]
So this project really
[41:00]
is asking a lot of our teachers, the teachers will participate
[41:04]
in an orientation session to learn how to use MATHia.
[41:07]
They're going to use the digital products with their class.
[41:09]
They're going to try to use it 30 to 40 minutes a week.
[41:13]
Now, what if they don't?
[41:14]
Well, that's part of the study.
[41:16]
If they don't use it 30 to 40 minutes a week, that's one of the things
[41:19]
AIR is looking at. Like what happened?
[41:21]
Why didn't you do it?
[41:22]
They're going to complete logs that are going to document
[41:25]
the use of Illustrative Mathematics and the digital product, which would be MATHia.
[41:29]
And the teachers will complete surveys
[41:31]
at the beginning, middle and end of the year.
[41:33]
They are welcome to join focus
[41:35]
groups and share more of their experience through the focus group.
[41:40]
And they're going to support the study team.
[41:42]
And I will also support the study team in getting the data that they need, because
[41:46]
part of this is making sure that we keep everything confidential and anonymous.
[41:52]
The students will
[41:55]
first of all, just to be right up front.
[41:58]
Everything is FERPA compliant.
[42:00]
This is the American Institute of Research.
[42:02]
They have, very clear outlines that show that they are compliant.
[42:08]
They will get parental consent,
[42:09]
informed consent before doing anything with students.
[42:13]
And, so in order to do
[42:16]
the survey, students would have to consent if their parents would have to consent.
[42:20]
And then they go a step further and the student needs to consent.
[42:24]
So because this is a research study, they have like an internal review board,
[42:28]
really monitoring to make sure that what they're doing is ethical.
[42:32]
Is that just for the survey or to participate in the
[42:36]
supplemental math lessons. As well?
[42:38]
Really glad you. Asked that. It's just for the survey.
[42:40]
Okay, great.
[42:40]
It's not for the supplemental math lessons because that would be inequitable.
[42:44]
So everyone will be able to use the product
[42:46]
whether or not they consent to the survey.
[42:48]
Great, great.
[42:49]
Thank you for asking that.
[42:51]
I wasn't going to. Say it.
[42:52]
And then students will have an opportunity if they want to,
[42:56]
to participate in focus groups, but not during the school day, probably.
[43:00]
I'm going to say definitely not during the school day.
[43:02]
Can you say more about what that would look like then?
[43:06]
I think it's on zoom, and I think,
[43:09]
that would really need even more parental consent, okay.
[43:13]
Because at that point it's not anonymous.
[43:16]
When we're having a conversation, you can see it's me.
[43:19]
So that's a and we don't have to have students in the focus groups.
[43:23]
That's an option.
[43:24]
That's an option.
[43:25]
One of the things about working with AIR is they're like,
[43:29]
if anything in here isn't okay, we won't do it.
[43:34]
It's not like you're signing a contract and like, you can't, you
[43:38]
can, consent or not consent at any time.
[43:43]
What we will give them is de-identified student data.
[43:47]
That means it will be completely no names, no identifiers whatsoever.
[43:51]
That data will come through us to them so that we make sure
[43:56]
that it's completely de-identified.
[43:58]
That is essential.
[44:01]
And that will be the
[44:02]
state math assessment scores,
[44:05]
STAR scores and,
[44:07]
demographic data, if applicable.
[44:10]
If it has two small size, obviously we're not giving it to them for the 23,
[44:15]
24, 2425 and 2526 school year.
[44:19]
Also, if applicable, scores on IM-aligned assessments in 2026-27.
[44:23]
We do use those assessments.
[44:25]
We will see if that is something
[44:26]
that we're able to provide in an anonymous and confidential way.
[44:30]
This is the big slide right here that you've got to pay close attention to,
[44:33]
because this is really what we're agreeing to do.
[44:35]
And I want to make sure that we all agree.
[44:41]
All right.
[44:41]
Here is the part that I was like, what?
[44:44]
What's happening?
[44:45]
The district will get a third $3,000.
[44:50]
It's not a stipend.
[44:51]
It's like a basically
[44:52]
like a payment for our extra work that we're putting into that.
[44:56]
And that will just go to the district.
[44:58]
Like Christine will be able to decide it is for the completion of this project.
[45:04]
So it's not just like found money, but, if people needed to be compensated
[45:09]
or we needed to do something, that money is for that
[45:12]
teachers get compensated for their time outside of school
[45:15]
because they have to fill out these logs and they have to do some reflection.
[45:20]
And so AIR is going to compensate them for that.
[45:24]
When they complete their surveys, they're going to be compensated for it.
[45:28]
And they also are compensated if they choose to participate in focus groups.
[45:32]
There is an opportunity for students to be compensated.
[45:35]
We have to talk about that.
[45:36]
I don't know if we can do that or not,
[45:38]
but that is something that happens in other places.
[45:41]
I know it's weird.
[45:42]
We never talk about compensation for studies, but this is one.
[45:45]
It's such a big study that they are doing that they really need the data.
[45:49]
Well, and I think it's good to if the teachers are
[45:52]
I mean, our teachers already spend so much time,
[45:55]
if you like, outside of the regular day doing work.
[45:57]
So recognizing that this adds a little bit more
[46:01]
and being compensated for that.
[46:03]
So I will also tell you, because I feel like I need to say this,
[46:06]
they did not know about this compensation before they excitedly agreed.
[46:09]
So I'm very happy. That it can happen.
[46:13]
It's the 975, just a flat fee upfront for all time.
[46:17]
Or is it up to 975 depending on how much time they spend on it?
[46:20]
No, that part is for
[46:21]
like the logs completing the logs, each one is connected to an activity that.
[46:25]
Okay.
[46:27]
So that is really my presentation about this.
[46:30]
There's a lot more to be said.
[46:32]
But really what I need to know is if I can do. It,
[46:36]
I think.
[46:37]
And I know we're getting academic data in a little bit,
[46:40]
I think it would be really interesting to see what our data looks like
[46:44]
at the end of next year after adding some supplemental tools.
[46:49]
And I also I
[46:53]
recall a teacher last year
[46:56]
making a comment to me about not loving the math curriculum.
[46:59]
So I think it would be really interesting to see what the feedback is
[47:04]
using these different methods, and then incorporate that
[47:08]
in our decision about what makes sense to do going forward.
[47:11]
You are really saving my life tonight, because the.
[47:14]
Other thing.
[47:15]
That I wanted to say is that a benefit to us as a district is that,
[47:20]
the the researchers will meet with our teams and say,
[47:24]
this is what we're noticing, this is what we're seeing going on,
[47:26]
and then they'll give us that data as well.
[47:28]
And I want that.
[47:31]
Great the student data.
[47:33]
Will that be by teacher or how will it be organized.
[47:37]
It's completely de-identified.
[47:39]
And then the students are assigned a research number which only I know.
[47:43]
And then they'll be linked.
[47:45]
So there will be a link.
[47:46]
Everything will be destroyed.
[47:47]
But basically like there's a research number associated with the student
[47:51]
and it's not identifiable.
[47:53]
It's only for this. Excellent.
[47:55]
Thank you.
[47:55]
I spent a lot of time clarifying that
[47:59]
okay.
[47:59]
So if we approve this tonight, what is your
[48:02]
what is the timeline for implementation?
[48:05]
If you approve this tonight then we're going to get started
[48:09]
with an onboarding meeting right away and then implement as soon as we can.
[48:13]
After that we want to get up and running as soon as we can if if you approve.
[48:16]
It okay, okay.
[48:19]
At the end of this tenure, which is it?
[48:22]
Is it the academic year?
[48:24]
That's a ten year.
[48:25]
So at the end of it,
[48:28]
what specifically will the district get?
[48:31]
Is there a report? Yeah, there's a report.
[48:35]
I am not very clear on exactly what
[48:39]
data is in there, but they're comparing
[48:43]
how students did in the previous years
[48:45]
to how they did with this new,
[48:49]
model.
[48:50]
So we'll get all of that.
[48:52]
And they're going to be meeting with the teachers, the,
[48:55]
the teams and kind of sharing with them what they're seeing.
[48:58]
We'll get a copy of what they do.
[49:02]
Okay. Thank you.
[49:03]
And typically you get to see,
[49:07]
what was collected.
[49:09]
Will we be able to to see.
[49:15]
Down to
[49:16]
maybe the time teachers were able to implement the intervention
[49:20]
and the outcome of the students
[49:21]
and compare based on the time students spent in the intervention.
[49:25]
That is some of the data they're collecting.
[49:27]
I don't know how they're going to organize that data,
[49:30]
but that's some of the data they're collecting
[49:31]
is how much time did you actually spend on this?
[49:34]
And then, like we have.
[49:36]
I would like to see the differences between implementation time and outcomes.
[49:40]
And they're really
[49:40]
what they're really doing is comparing
[49:42]
they they're looking at both of these products.
[49:44]
They're comparing them.
[49:45]
And then they're seeing how do they impact coherence.
[49:48]
Are they are they a coherent supplement.
[49:54]
And that is their
[49:55]
goal to provide the district with their curriculum based on their.
[49:59]
No. AIR's goal is to publish studies that I read, not just.
[50:03]
Me, but okay that. Educators read.
[50:06]
So of the American Institutes for Research.
[50:08]
They publish tons of studies.
[50:10]
We're kind of super fans of there, so we're a little bit excited.
[50:13]
They're really awesome. I used that work a lot. Okay.
[50:16]
Yeah okay.
[50:17]
Yeah they are they are a straight up research agency.
[50:20]
So you know, it's not the intervention so much as does this intervention work.
[50:25]
Can we contribute to the evidence
[50:27]
based behind this intervention or are we saying it's not effective.
[50:30]
So cool. Cool. Really cool.
[50:32]
The type of research that you then bring to us years later to say,
[50:36]
we would like you to fund the implementation of this new curriculum.
[50:39]
And here's the research that backs it up like this is
[50:43]
we get to go behind the curtain for that.
[50:45]
And does it target all students,
[50:46]
or is it typically the general education classroom or does it do they?
[50:50]
Every student gets tier one service so every student will be part of it okay.
[50:55]
Right.
[50:57]
Even if their parent doesn't want to consent to some of the data collection,
[51:01]
they can still participate in MATHia and they'll still get that instruction.
[51:08]
Any additional discussion?
[51:10]
Thank you. Okay.
[51:12]
Can I please have a motion to approve
[51:16]
the coherence counts research proposal?
[51:19]
So move to Shell and Liz. Seconds.
[51:23]
Any additional discussion?
[51:24]
Thank you, Jen, for that presentation.
[51:25]
That was great. All those in favor?
[51:29]
Motion passes 7 to 0.
[51:33]
And next up, we have a motion.
[51:36]
An MoU for
[51:40]
The Granite YMCA.
[51:42]
Can I please have a motion to approve
[51:45]
the MOU between the Dover School District and The Granite YMCA
[51:49]
before and after school childcare for this current school year?
[51:53]
I can make a motion.
[51:54]
Seana and Micaela.
[51:57]
Second, Any discussion?
[52:01]
This is just.
[52:03]
What's the program at Woodman Park?
[52:04]
Because this just says Garrison and Horne Street. So this is Garrison, and,
[52:09]
Woodman Park uses the SOCC.
[52:12]
That's right.
[52:12]
In the afternoon, and we have not had enough families signing on
[52:16]
and subscribing to the Y to run a Y before care program.
[52:19]
Okay, great.
[52:23]
Any additional discussion?
[52:25]
All those in favor?
[52:26]
Motion passes seven zero.
[52:30]
And then moving on.
[52:31]
This one I'm excited about, the Dover para
[52:35]
educators contract.
[52:40]
We have.
[52:41]
Ratified by the DPA at 407, the staff.
[52:43]
Hot off the press.
[52:46]
We had a successful, end to our negotiation a couple of weeks ago.
[52:50]
So excited to,
[52:53]
get this one done and offer them a three year contract.
[52:58]
If you approve tonight, I'll be going to City council on Wednesday night with it.
[53:01]
Great. Okay.
[53:03]
Can you give top, top lines?
[53:07]
Yeah.
[53:07]
So we have a summary on our desk today.
[53:10]
Do you want to you want to go over it or do you want me to.
[53:13]
If you would like to. That's fine. I mean, you were on. The committee.
[53:15]
I had the pleasure of being on the negotiation committee.
[53:18]
I think the biggest thing in that we made changes to is the wage scale.
[53:23]
It's a small increase for year one.
[53:27]
The reason for that is, in addition to the wage scale,
[53:32]
we added a new stipend for extensive, extensive needs,
[53:37]
recognizing the very specialized work that some of our characters do.
[53:42]
And some of our students require a lot of extra specialized care.
[53:46]
So we added an extensive needs differentiated
[53:50]
differential for parents who are working
[53:54]
with students who meet the criteria to receive that additional stipend.
[53:58]
And then in year two and year
[54:01]
three of the agreement will see an additional 4% increase. To.
[54:06]
Their salaries. Right.
[54:08]
And then the last big change that we made
[54:11]
was an increase to their longevity bonus
[54:15]
for recognizing their service with the district.
[54:18]
And then there were some other,
[54:21]
just policy language tweaks,
[54:24]
but these were the big financial pieces that we agreed to.
[54:28]
Thank you.
[54:29]
Thanks for.
[54:32]
Did I miss anything?
[54:33]
No, I don't think so.
[54:34]
The only other thing I would highlight is there's a new base scale here.
[54:38]
We had worked to equalize the differences
[54:42]
between steps and classifications, particularly steps, though.
[54:46]
What happens is when you give a 4% increase
[54:49]
over every square of the contract, the higher squares
[54:53]
get more of an increase in the lower squares,
[54:55]
and after a few years it gets a little inequitable.
[54:59]
So we made an adjustment there.
[55:02]
Yeah.
[55:03]
What are the differences between the classes? Yep.
[55:06]
You don't have to go deep on that.
[55:07]
I'm just curious because I wasn't involved.
[55:09]
Just what you're doing.
[55:11]
So, class two and three are really your special education pairs.
[55:15]
The difference
[55:16]
between class two and three is if they have their para two certification,
[55:19]
your class fours are, maybe tutoring positions, things like that.
[55:25]
That also might require some teaching certification.
[55:28]
Okay. Thank you.
[55:32]
Any additional questions?
[55:36]
Okay.
[55:37]
Can I please have a motion to approve the Dover Paraeducators' Association
[55:42]
Collective Bargaining agreement for school years 2026 through 2029.
[55:47]
I haven't up so fast
[55:50]
on the negotiation team. Yeah.
[55:52]
And the second.
[55:53]
Yeah. Any additional discussion?
[55:56]
Roll call. Vote, please.
[55:57]
All right.
[55:58]
Robin? Yes. Michelle Clancy. Yes.
[56:00]
Craig Flynn. Yes.
[56:01]
Maggie Fogarty.
[56:02]
Yes. I got Micaela, I believe.
[56:04]
Micaela. Yes.
[56:06]
Elizabeth Goldman. Yes.
[56:07]
And Seana Berkley Hallberg.
[56:08]
Yes. Seven passes. Great.
[56:12]
Okay.
[56:12]
I couldn't tell if you had a question or if you were just enthusiastically
[56:15]
putting the motion forward.
[56:18]
Great.
[56:19]
And so then this will go to the city council for my.
[56:24]
Great, great.
[56:25]
You're up Bret. Next.
[56:27]
Go to prove it.
[56:30]
Well, the good news of this is this is within our budget this year. Yes.
[56:34]
Yeah.
[56:35]
Okay.
[56:37]
Moving on to the
[56:41]
our annual review of our sports injury action plan.
[56:45]
So this is by policy.
[56:48]
We need to review it every year.
[56:49]
Bring it back to you all.
[56:51]
Our athletic director and athletic trainer reviewed it.
[56:54]
They did not see any changes that needed to be made.
[56:57]
What they wanted me to highlight for you is,
[57:01]
they're hoping you approve this tonight.
[57:03]
They also wanted to let you know that
[57:05]
when the new field comes online, they will be bringing changes to you.
[57:09]
Okay. So one of my questions.
[57:11]
So. Yeah.
[57:12]
Okay.
[57:15]
Because I saw on the table the last update was March 26th.
[57:20]
And so I wasn't sure if the items that were bolded were changes or not.
[57:23]
So that makes sense.
[57:25]
No, but they will be bringing as we bring that new field online.
[57:28]
They will have updates. Great.
[57:31]
Yeah.
[57:31]
I think we've seen some community concern about field temperatures
[57:36]
with the turf field.
[57:37]
So, And that we would actually follow our existing temperature.
[57:42]
Because we have something in place.
[57:44]
So it doesn't matter if
[57:45]
it's x number of degrees on grass or turf, we would not play on it.
[57:49]
And I was going to highlight that for, for those in the community
[57:53]
did have those concerns throughout this process.
[57:56]
We've told them that we already have this policy in place.
[57:59]
It is in here extensively.
[58:01]
There's 5 or 6 pages breaking that down.
[58:04]
And also in this I appreciate in this plan that we have all these external fields
[58:09]
that we've been using as home field stuff, this process listed in here as well.
[58:11]
So we then just pass that responsibility off to other schools.
[58:14]
We took ownership of that and the fields that we've had to use
[58:17]
and been fortunate enough to use during this process at our off site.
[58:20]
So I really appreciate seeing that and there as well.
[58:23]
I do think we're going to have a need for a policy about the,
[58:28]
g max testing
[58:29]
frequency and what our parameters are for that.
[58:32]
I think we should probably have. That.
[58:35]
Ready to go before we play, for any significant amount of time.
[58:40]
Okay.
[58:42]
That holds us to it.
[58:44]
Right?
[58:45]
So we don't end up like Nashua and having to close the field
[58:49]
suddenly because we didn't take proper care.
[58:52]
I have nothing, I think we would do that, but.
[58:54]
Added a to do right now.
[58:57]
Thank you.
[58:57]
It would be amount of money we're investing into this field.
[59:00]
I think we should follow whatever maintenance protocol agreed.
[59:05]
That situation with the closed field, they
[59:07]
they were supposed to repair or replace at a certain time.
[59:10]
They chose not to.
[59:12]
And it was years, years and years beyond lifespan and they lost it.
[59:16]
So, I don't anticipate we'll put ourselves in that situation.
[59:20]
Yes. Are there any
[59:21]
data on on incidents, number of,
[59:24]
of times that emergency medical care necessary?
[59:30]
I don't have that tonight.
[59:33]
I could get that from our athletic trainer.
[59:35]
It's going to vary by sport and by season.
[59:38]
But I can get that for you and bring it back to a later meeting.
[59:41]
Or maybe even bring that back when we bring the policy update back
[59:45]
for the new field.
[59:46]
Okay. Thank you. Okay.
[59:48]
Okay.
[59:49]
Motion to approve the annual review
[59:52]
of the sports injury action Plan.
[59:57]
And Micaela seconds
[59:58]
any additional discussion?
[1:00:02]
All those in favor?
[1:00:03]
Motion passes 7 to 0.
[1:00:05]
It wasn't sure if that was a roll call.
[1:00:07]
No. It's not okay.
[1:00:08]
Moving on to our AI plan draft.
[1:00:13]
So we have Director Rup and Director Mehalek.
[1:00:16]
Or just director. I don't know how you've
[1:00:20]
the lone wolf tonight, my friend.
[1:00:22]
That's all right.
[1:00:24]
To talk about our generative AI use plan.
[1:00:28]
So, Thomas Rup, Director
[1:00:30]
of technology for this school district.
[1:00:33]
This is a plan that we're looking for approval from the school board
[1:00:38]
to put in place for the 2627 school year.
[1:00:43]
This was something that was developed and written by Director Mehalek and myself.
[1:00:48]
It has been thoroughly vetted and approved
[1:00:51]
by many different sections of the school district,
[1:00:55]
including a task force that was developed
[1:00:58]
including parents, teachers, counselors
[1:01:02]
from all schools, and from the SAU as well.
[1:01:06]
We also went in front of the Dover District leadership team
[1:01:11]
to look at this and understand where we're going with our AI plan.
[1:01:17]
First is the why, beyond the fact
[1:01:20]
that our generative AI policy states that we need to have a plan in place
[1:01:26]
in order to effectively support that policy.
[1:01:30]
We felt that Dover needed an individualized,
[1:01:37]
I don't want
[1:01:38]
to say plan again, but an individualized path
[1:01:42]
to success to utilizing, AI within our school district.
[1:01:47]
This was heavily influenced by the framework that was created
[1:01:50]
by the state of New Hampshire that was created mainly by
[1:01:55]
influences from Pinkerton in Bedford, in those schools.
[1:01:59]
We are starkly different than the way those schools are constructed.
[1:02:04]
We don't have digital learning specialists or technology
[1:02:08]
coaches to be able to help teachers, better understand
[1:02:12]
this policy and this plan and how to effectively use AI.
[1:02:16]
So we wanted to do this and make it something
[1:02:20]
that is very uniquely ours, which is why we have
[1:02:23]
students and educators at the center of this whole plan.
[1:02:26]
Yes.
[1:02:28]
Administrators are involved in this as well too.
[1:02:31]
But really, it was about counselors and teachers and students
[1:02:35]
and how they can effectively utilize AI
[1:02:39]
to help broaden our students learning experiences.
[1:02:44]
All these slides are in
[1:02:47]
the plan, which is in your packet of materials,
[1:02:51]
probably somewhere around page 200 or something
[1:02:54]
with all the policies that you guys have to go through that.
[1:02:56]
163 yeah.
[1:02:58]
And, what we have here is we've taken some of the bulleted points out of there.
[1:03:03]
So there's some subsections within there that these are directly out.
[1:03:07]
So you'll be able to reference back to this at any point in time.
[1:03:10]
We're going to try to blitz through this as fast as possible.
[1:03:13]
So that way we can get to everything.
[1:03:15]
Except use obvious points of this.
[1:03:19]
One of the things I want to point out is when it says acceptable use
[1:03:23]
for district employees.
[1:03:24]
It does.
[1:03:25]
On that first, Bolen points a lesson planning and differentiated instruction.
[1:03:28]
We do have some very specific guardrails about how we view that to go.
[1:03:32]
We do not want teachers to specifically just say,
[1:03:35]
create me a lesson plan for today.
[1:03:37]
We want teachers to be able to utilize this to have their lesson plan
[1:03:42]
and then send it in to AI
[1:03:43]
to give them some talking points, or to help them draft the outline of how
[1:03:47]
they want to be able to take that plan and deliver that students.
[1:03:50]
So it's utilizes a tool.
[1:03:52]
AI and technology is our tools.
[1:03:55]
It's no different than a hammer.
[1:03:58]
However, a hammer
[1:03:59]
can be utilized to build a wall, but can also be utilized to destroy a wall.
[1:04:03]
It's the same way with technology and with AI.
[1:04:05]
That's why we want to ensure that we're utilizing this to build those walls,
[1:04:08]
not tear them down.
[1:04:09]
Students, very succinct on our points here.
[1:04:15]
Brainstorm ideas, practice writing, and we're going to get into this
[1:04:19]
a little bit more when we show you an example of where the high school plans
[1:04:22]
to go with this and what their thoughts are on utilization of AI in the classroom,
[1:04:27]
and we have all the way up to administrators
[1:04:30]
how we would utilize this with our everyday lives.
[1:04:34]
For instance, Brian may utilize this to help him much more quickly
[1:04:38]
and efficiently.
[1:04:39]
Look at the differentials between last year's budget and this year's budget
[1:04:43]
when it comes to building the budget book,
[1:04:44]
and be able to help identify those points fast.
[1:04:47]
So that way he doesn't have to rebuild all the code in an Excel spreadsheet
[1:04:50]
to, to, you know, something that AI can utilize can do very quickly for him
[1:04:57]
with those accepted acceptable uses.
[1:04:59]
There's obviously prohibited uses.
[1:05:01]
These are very, very
[1:05:05]
necessary, but they're also kind of common sense.
[1:05:09]
We're not trying
[1:05:09]
to reinvent the wheel for anything that we want to prohibit with AI.
[1:05:13]
But we don't want to focus on the punitive side of it.
[1:05:18]
We want to focus on building proper digital literacy
[1:05:21]
and digital citizenship for the use of AI in our school district.
[1:05:25]
So these are all, again available on that packet
[1:05:28]
that you have.
[1:05:32]
One of the really big points
[1:05:33]
that we wanted to make about this is that AI helps us with equitable access.
[1:05:37]
We want to ensure that what we approve
[1:05:40]
for software and AI tools are available for every student.
[1:05:44]
They can be utilized and have no language barriers, no learning barriers
[1:05:49]
that anyone would be able to utilize this to be able to have success
[1:05:52]
in the classroom.
[1:05:53]
It's also going to become very important for our English
[1:05:57]
as a second language learners.
[1:05:59]
They are going to be able to utilize AI to help translate
[1:06:03]
what is going on in the classroom very quickly and easily into their
[1:06:06]
own language, to help them be able to much more quickly and easily
[1:06:12]
be able to
[1:06:12]
succeed in the classroom, just as every other student can hear.
[1:06:17]
We've been looking into this a lot over the past couple of weeks.
[1:06:20]
As we start looking at, you know, how we want to go forth,
[1:06:24]
we're getting a much, much more diverse population here in Dover.
[1:06:28]
So we want to ensure that we're utilizing the tools correctly.
[1:06:31]
So that way everyone has the information they need.
[1:06:34]
And feel free to stop me
[1:06:36]
at any time, especially as we get into this part of things here.
[1:06:40]
This is actually appendix C of that documentation.
[1:06:43]
It's really towards the end of it, but we felt
[1:06:45]
it was more important to address this a little bit earlier in this presentation.
[1:06:49]
We really wanted to ensure that we have not only a reason for this plan,
[1:06:54]
but an actual grade based section out area here
[1:07:00]
so that we know what we believe is appropriate use
[1:07:03]
in appropriate use, and where that we should develop
[1:07:07]
those good habits in those learning skills throughout the school district.
[1:07:12]
We're taking this with a very top down approach, meaning, because the high school
[1:07:17]
will be utilizing this a lot more than most of your other grade levels.
[1:07:21]
That's where our focus is on this years, to really ensure that we have that,
[1:07:26]
to understand how students want to utilize it and understand
[1:07:29]
how teachers want to utilize it.
[1:07:30]
That way, we can build those students up as they go through their grade levels
[1:07:35]
for effective use of AI.
[1:07:36]
When they get into the, into the high school.
[1:07:39]
You're going to see in one of the following slides
[1:07:41]
that was developed by Dean Lapoint, the Dean of Instruction at the high school.
[1:07:44]
How they want to have students utilize this in an effective way every day.
[1:07:50]
And we feel this path right now
[1:07:53]
is very solid in developing those skills for students.
[1:07:56]
So that way they enter the high school.
[1:08:01]
So, you know, pre-K to two.
[1:08:03]
There's a lot of other conversations surrounding technology
[1:08:06]
in these grade levels.
[1:08:07]
So we really want to limit AI to a standpoint of really this teachers
[1:08:11]
just mainly talking about it, that it's out there.
[1:08:14]
We'll do some digital citizenship and some digital literacy based on it,
[1:08:18]
but it's not going to be anything where students are hands on with with AI
[1:08:21]
in any way, shape or form.
[1:08:23]
We'll get into grades three and five and we'll use them beginning level
[1:08:27]
AI tools, some things like that we have in Khan Academy or other areas
[1:08:32]
where we can really drill this down into effective use for those younger levels.
[1:08:38]
The point of that grade level is for that 3 to 5
[1:08:42]
is to ensure that this is teacher led, okay.
[1:08:45]
This is something where the teacher mainly will be up on the board
[1:08:48]
and utilizing maybe, instruction to say, look,
[1:08:52]
this is how you can differentiate your studies by utilizing this tool.
[1:08:56]
But it may not be necessarily
[1:08:58]
that we're going to put this tool in the students hands.
[1:09:01]
That probably won't happen until we start getting into grades six through eight.
[1:09:05]
That's the area where we're going to really start
[1:09:07]
giving some good, solid digital citizenship and digital literacy.
[1:09:11]
So that way they understand the dangers of utilizing AR AI.
[1:09:15]
Today in the state of New Hampshire, actually, there was the very first
[1:09:19]
deepfake case.
[1:09:20]
A 22 year old was actually found not guilty of a deep fake
[1:09:26]
of using AI on a police body cam footage that was released.
[1:09:30]
And so, you know, we wanted to ensure
[1:09:33]
that our students are not going involved into these types of things.
[1:09:37]
So, you know, grade six eight is going to be a
[1:09:41]
lot of real instruction about the appropriate use of it.
[1:09:45]
And then grades nine through 12 will be more.
[1:09:48]
Okay.
[1:09:49]
You should know how to use it.
[1:09:51]
We want you to use it effectively.
[1:09:53]
But these are the guardrails of where we want to do it.
[1:09:55]
And we're not forcing any teacher
[1:09:57]
by any stretch of the imagination with this to utilize AI,
[1:09:59]
or that they have to teach AI, or that they have to put it in the students hands.
[1:10:04]
It's going to be up to the teacher
[1:10:05]
and how comfortable they feel utilizing it,
[1:10:07]
and how they're going to be able to teach it.
[1:10:09]
Unless you're teaching Stem, then you're probably going to have to teach it
[1:10:14]
at some point and become pretty affluent with it.
[1:10:17]
This here is the actual language which is in the handbook,
[1:10:22]
the student handbook at the high school, as well as
[1:10:26]
some information that has been put into their syllabi.
[1:10:29]
Each teacher this year was asked to put in language
[1:10:34]
that defined how that they may or may not utilize AI
[1:10:38]
in their classroom, that students may or may not be asked to use.
[1:10:42]
Utilize it, and it will be accepted, based on a scale system
[1:10:47]
of how much they feel that the students should be utilizing AI.
[1:10:51]
This is in a little bit farther down in the documentation
[1:10:57]
where we gave you all the whole plan where the high school is going with this.
[1:11:01]
Once this plan is approved and how we want to put it in there correctly.
[1:11:06]
Second bulletin is the one that I really want to point out with this.
[1:11:08]
This is when AI is permitted.
[1:11:11]
Students must use it transparently, verify its accuracy,
[1:11:15]
protect private information,
[1:11:17]
and ensure that the final submission reflects their own understanding.
[1:11:21]
That was very imperative.
[1:11:22]
As Dean Lapoint and I discussed this and how to actually
[1:11:26]
deploy in high school this year was to ensure that no matter
[1:11:30]
even if they were utilizing AI, it was still their own authentic,
[1:11:34]
unique work and not just obviously plagiarized.
[1:11:38]
Copy and paste out of there.
[1:11:40]
You'll see when we get to the next slide.
[1:11:43]
We have some sections here which we felt
[1:11:47]
were very important, and this was all solely developed by Dean
[1:11:51]
Lapoint.
[1:11:52]
She was the impetus of doing all of this.
[1:11:55]
One of the teachers actually showed this to their students in
[1:11:58]
the student went up to Lapoint a little bit later today and said,
[1:12:01]
this was you, this we could tell that this had the figure prints all over it.
[1:12:04]
And she's. Yeah, absolutely.
[1:12:07]
It was very important to her that she's modeling the behaviors
[1:12:10]
for these students to say, I didn't have a I create this for me.
[1:12:15]
It was something that I wrote because I feel deeply in the fact that
[1:12:19]
now she did have some help by saying, like,
[1:12:22]
you know, with some word changes and things like that.
[1:12:24]
And that's reflected throughout this whole,
[1:12:27]
scale system that they're going to be utilizing in Dover High School.
[1:12:31]
So for instance, zero is AI free.
[1:12:34]
This is something we utilize during finals time.
[1:12:37]
Principal Driscoll has asked me last year on both finals during midterms
[1:12:41]
and during the end of the year finals to turn off AI for students.
[1:12:44]
So that way we could ensure that the work that they were doing during
[1:12:47]
those finals was authentically their own
[1:12:49]
and they weren't allowed to go to the sites.
[1:12:51]
So we go into Aristotle K-12.
[1:12:54]
We shut off all AI usage for students.
[1:12:56]
They can't get to those websites, and they're able to just do this on their own.
[1:13:01]
We feel this year that most teachers and students
[1:13:04]
will fall into the category one and two section, which is AI assisted.
[1:13:08]
I think that's where the staff is going to be very comfortable
[1:13:12]
this year, to be able to ensure that they have the start of this AI plan.
[1:13:17]
So they're going to use it to brainstorm and spark ideas
[1:13:20]
and use it like a tutor to understand concepts.
[1:13:23]
The idea is to develop this throughout this year, next year, and probably
[1:13:27]
the third year to get to 0.5, where you can utilize AI throughout the process,
[1:13:32]
but be able to detail every point of it that you used effectively.
[1:13:37]
So that way you still understand that this is my own authentic work,
[1:13:40]
but it was influenced by how I did research through AI
[1:13:43]
that that's the the ultimate goal here.
[1:13:46]
Again, we're not telling every teacher the high school that they have to do this.
[1:13:50]
This is not you know, you can sit in section 1 or 2
[1:13:54]
for your entire career, and that is perfectly acceptable
[1:13:57]
because you want to have
[1:13:59]
your students utilizing things in a way that makes sense to you.
[1:14:02]
And when they give out an assignment, they'll have this check sheet.
[1:14:06]
And they can say, you can go up to level
[1:14:07]
two with this, which is I use it like a tutor,
[1:14:10]
and you should not have anything in there that is undocumented from AI
[1:14:14]
coming forward for this.
[1:14:15]
It's a very, very in-depth plan that Dean Lapoint has come up with,
[1:14:19]
and we're very appreciative of the hard work
[1:14:20]
she put in to have this set up for the high school to use this year.
[1:14:26]
As I said, I'm trying to blitz through this as fast as possible.
[1:14:29]
Obviously with this comes from professional learning.
[1:14:32]
We really wanted to get this into your hands today.
[1:14:34]
So that way on the October 9th, PD day,
[1:14:38]
I will be going out in front of the staff and trying to help them understand
[1:14:42]
where this fits into each grade level and what what our expectations are again
[1:14:47]
for this year.
[1:14:48]
It's going to be a lot of the expectations is utilizing professional development
[1:14:52]
to understand where you sit in the world of AI,
[1:14:55]
not necessarily putting it in the hands of students.
[1:14:57]
We were going to continue to build into that all the way
[1:15:01]
throughout the next three years for sure.
[1:15:05]
With this, obviously, I always have to talk about that.
[1:15:09]
There is accountability that will be held.
[1:15:10]
If you do fail to follow the guidelines to stay within these guardrails
[1:15:15]
for students, obviously you could lose access to it
[1:15:17]
as much as following our policies for plagiarism, if that's what happens.
[1:15:22]
Every single one of these does state in there that you could be referred
[1:15:26]
to authorities if law is violated, i.e.,
[1:15:29]
if you decide to dig a deepfake of somebody,
[1:15:32]
you can now be prosecuted in the state of New Hampshire
[1:15:34]
for that, as we found out today with that first case,
[1:15:38]
and all of us are going to be held accountable, even myself,
[1:15:41]
if I do something wrong with AI, I fully expect Dr. Boston
[1:15:45]
to come up to me and address me and say, why did you do this?
[1:15:48]
And, you know, whatever consequences would come from it.
[1:15:52]
First, I'll have to realize you used AI.
[1:15:55]
I rarely use when it comes to that.
[1:15:57]
I only do it really for data manipulation for the most part,
[1:16:00]
sometimes for creating graphics.
[1:16:03]
But, so this is this the endpoint
[1:16:07]
we're going to go through this year and understand how this worked.
[1:16:10]
And if there are any tweaks.
[1:16:12]
And we plan on coming back to the school board next October
[1:16:16]
with a review of how we felt the last year, when
[1:16:19]
and where we need to make some changes to best identify
[1:16:22]
how to continue to implement this plan for the next years to come.
[1:16:27]
There's going to be some legislation that comes out from the state based on AI,
[1:16:31]
based on screen time, based on all these other factors.
[1:16:34]
That is going to change this over the next year.
[1:16:36]
We fully anticipate that, and we're willing to make whatever changes
[1:16:40]
we need to to understand the best way to have our students ready
[1:16:43]
for college or wherever they go in life, where AI will be used.
[1:16:47]
Again, the ultimate goal is to have them to that that five section
[1:16:51]
where they can go out into the real world and say,
[1:16:53]
I used AI, but it wasn't AI written, it was me.
[1:16:57]
Authentically.
[1:16:57]
AI helped me gather the research in a way that made sense.
[1:17:01]
So that's it for this, I say, trying to get this done
[1:17:05]
as quick as possible so we can get into the data review as well.
[1:17:08]
So any questions? Yes.
[1:17:11]
I just pulled that policy EHAG.
[1:17:15]
I'm struggling to
[1:17:16]
understand how these two documents interact with each other.
[1:17:20]
The age is the policy that is our overwhelming.
[1:17:23]
This is what we expect to see from our staff and our students.
[1:17:28]
This is what we hold people accountable against.
[1:17:31]
The plan is how do we implement this, how we get to the point where
[1:17:34]
students are utilizing AI effectively within the parameters of that policy EHAG.
[1:17:40]
Okay, so. Policy directed us to have a.
[1:17:42]
Plan, right? Got it.
[1:17:43]
Policy action plan. Yeah.
[1:17:45]
Perfect. Got it. Thank you.
[1:17:48]
I saw in the plan
[1:17:50]
there's a list of approved AI.
[1:17:54]
Yeah, we didn't want to go over that right now.
[1:17:56]
Because we wanted to ensure that the.
[1:17:59]
That was a list of possible approved AI.
[1:18:04]
The ones we're currently looking at now,
[1:18:07]
like there is AI embedded in HMH's CKLA.
[1:18:10]
And a lot of the curriculum software
[1:18:11]
we're utilizing, it already has an AI agent built into that.
[1:18:15]
The new one we just approved to correct the research project is.
[1:18:19]
Yeah.
[1:18:19]
So those are the areas where we know that it's going to be there
[1:18:22]
and those are going to be approved software anyways.
[1:18:24]
It's really looking at some of the other generative
[1:18:26]
AI products and how they would best fit our students.
[1:18:30]
For instance, no offense to ChatGPT, but I'll never approve ChatGPT.
[1:18:34]
Well, so.
[1:18:35]
That's my student.
[1:18:36]
Data privacy students will never be able
[1:18:38]
to use it in my standpoint, because they're they will sell off data.
[1:18:41]
Right.
[1:18:41]
And so that's my question.
[1:18:43]
As far as so the school issued devices,
[1:18:47]
they cannot download other applications outside of.
[1:18:50]
Okay.
[1:18:51]
Within I use copilot minimally at work because I don't like it. But
[1:18:59]
but for like Google Gemini.
[1:19:00]
So I think my concern is do
[1:19:05]
do our software monitoring tools also work on these AI tools.
[1:19:11]
So like if a student is having an inappropriate conversation with the chat,
[1:19:16]
that gaggle is going to catch stuff like that.
[1:19:19]
Yes. Will it.
[1:19:20]
Is working on keystrokes more than it is actual, like
[1:19:23]
rereading the content for something like AI.
[1:19:26]
Gaggle has to keep up with this.
[1:19:28]
It's very difficult, right?
[1:19:31]
AI is always two steps ahead of anything that's trying to review it
[1:19:34]
to ensure that we're we're doing everything in a correct and safe way.
[1:19:38]
However, any AI conversation with Gemini is owned by the Dover School District.
[1:19:43]
Therefore, we have the right to be able to understand what is being inputted into.
[1:19:48]
Gentlemen, I at any given time.
[1:19:49]
It is a core service of Google, which is one of the reasons why
[1:19:52]
that would be one that we would approve, because we could ensure
[1:19:56]
that we were still keeping kids safe within the utilization of that.
[1:19:59]
Okay.
[1:20:00]
And as far as the
[1:20:03]
so the data that they input, Dover owns that.
[1:20:07]
But then can Google or Microsoft do anything with that data to improve their.
[1:20:12]
Model, the agreements,
[1:20:13]
if they sell any of that data off, if they do anything with that data
[1:20:16]
other than utilize it internally for their own use, then we have the right
[1:20:22]
to cut that contract and actually sue them for for inappropriate use of that.
[1:20:27]
I appreciate this
[1:20:28]
plan, and I appreciate the care that went into,
[1:20:32]
recognizing what's age appropriate to learn for each level.
[1:20:36]
And then the chart about the different levels of AI usage.
[1:20:42]
I have some coworkers who would benefit
[1:20:44]
from having something like that to assess their work against.
[1:20:47]
But I really appreciate
[1:20:50]
the level of detail that went into this to make sure that we are
[1:20:54]
teaching our students how to use this technology responsibly.
[1:20:57]
We fully understand as well to that the community probably would benefit
[1:21:02]
from some instruction and some help about where these products are going
[1:21:06]
in the different and essentially how to raise children in this digital age.
[1:21:10]
I've sent some information over to Dr. Boston that we will be
[1:21:13]
looking at very soon to hopefully, start giving some different ways
[1:21:19]
to have parents understand the threats that are out there in this world.
[1:21:23]
But we're we're not we're near ready to, to release any of that right now.
[1:21:28]
But it is something we are investigating.
[1:21:30]
I think it might be helpful.
[1:21:34]
I don't know if there's a way to quantify,
[1:21:36]
but just maybe getting some information at the end of the year about where
[1:21:41]
everyone, like staff, is feeling a comfort level with AI usage,
[1:21:45]
where most folks are using it and like what mode
[1:21:48]
based on this chart, they're using it in most frequently.
[1:21:53]
There's some scary headlines out there right now about AI in the world
[1:21:56]
ending in ten years.
[1:21:57]
So I just whatever we do, you've put great care into this plan so far.
[1:22:01]
So I just want to continue down that path.
[1:22:03]
We appreciate that Director Mehalek has put a lot of her hard work into this as well.
[1:22:08]
We we intentionally, we're very
[1:22:15]
specific with the people that we asked to be on our
[1:22:18]
AI task force, people that were
[1:22:23]
to try
[1:22:24]
to say this is diplomatic as possible, but they were not necessarily
[1:22:28]
heavy users of AI, nor do they plan to be heavy users of AI.
[1:22:33]
And we wanted those voices on our task force as well to.
[1:22:36]
And we felt that was to us actually succeeding with this plan
[1:22:41]
and hopefully being able to do this in a careful and responsible way.
[1:22:47]
One quick question.
[1:22:48]
I'm looking on plan page ten,
[1:22:51]
which for us is agenda page 172.
[1:22:56]
Since this is am I understanding correctly,
[1:22:58]
this is a brand new document.
[1:23:01]
Yes. Yeah.
[1:23:02]
So it just it references that a board
[1:23:05]
like I think all the dates need to be shifted 12 months into the future.
[1:23:08]
It references like a border port coming out October 1st of this year
[1:23:12]
and fiscal year 2526. We shifted.
[1:23:15]
That was our original intention for that to come out this year.
[1:23:20]
At the beginning of the year.
[1:23:21]
But we couldn't get this in front of you all until now.
[1:23:24]
So it was a little difficult for us to be able to do that.
[1:23:27]
So yeah, there should probably be a couple of small amendments to it
[1:23:31]
with those dates.
[1:23:31]
But as you see from the plan that we have here,
[1:23:35]
our data is going to be coming out October 1st of next year.
[1:23:38]
Yeah.
[1:23:38]
Well, I saw the 2027 in in the slide presentation,
[1:23:42]
which is what kind of made me wonder about that.
[1:23:46]
That difference. Yeah.
[1:23:49]
There's kind of
[1:23:49]
a funky start to the school year too. So.
[1:23:56]
Any other questions or discussion?
[1:24:00]
Thank you Tom.
[1:24:01]
Thank you.
[1:24:01]
Thank you very much.
[1:24:03]
Motion to accept the AI
[1:24:06]
plan for the school year.
[1:24:09]
Micaela.
[1:24:11]
And the second.
[1:24:13]
Any additional discussion?
[1:24:15]
All those in favor?
[1:24:17]
Motion passes 7 to 0.
[1:24:19]
And then moving on to our academic data presentation.
[1:24:25]
So this is, end of year data
[1:24:29]
from last school year academic data.
[1:24:32]
And I just want to preface this with there will be another presentation
[1:24:37]
probably November, where we go over the statewide assessment data.
[1:24:41]
The data you're going to see tonight, we've had the opportunity
[1:24:44]
to share with our leadership team this summer.
[1:24:48]
And then we had the opportunity to share with the full faculty
[1:24:51]
on the first day back.
[1:24:53]
So they have seen all of this as well.
[1:24:56]
Can you advance one slide for me?
[1:24:59]
Thank you. So.
[1:25:05]
And I think this is small
[1:25:06]
for you to see, and I don't believe it's in your packets.
[1:25:09]
So I will circulate it for you.
[1:25:11]
But what this shows is that is a three year progression.
[1:25:15]
Oh, there you go.
[1:25:16]
A three year progression.
[1:25:18]
Way clearer than that screen.
[1:25:20]
It is. Really looking. Over there.
[1:25:22]
Get that focused in.
[1:25:25]
So this shows by academic pillar where we've been over three years at this point.
[1:25:30]
So you can see reading achievement 2024.
[1:25:33]
We started at 54% proficiency.
[1:25:36]
Our target is 80.
[1:25:37]
We're up to 59 this year.
[1:25:39]
Well being we started at 55%.
[1:25:43]
We are now at 57.
[1:25:45]
However, we were at 60% last year, so we dropped a little bit.
[1:25:50]
That I believe a lot of it is based on our feedback score, which
[1:25:57]
staff do a
[1:25:58]
Panorama survey where we talk about culture and climate.
[1:26:01]
And one of the things we noticed is that staff's perception of quality
[1:26:06]
feedback is low.
[1:26:07]
That was, I think, our lowest score on that scale.
[1:26:11]
So we'll talk more about that in a bit.
[1:26:13]
Continuous improvement in winter 2019, we had 9% capacity.
[1:26:19]
We are now at actually more than 43% at this point.
[1:26:25]
And our target goal was 56%.
[1:26:28]
So we are on pace to meet that goal before the end of the strategic plan.
[1:26:32]
We may need to adjust that goal a little bit further out.
[1:26:37]
Math achievement.
[1:26:39]
We started at 39%.
[1:26:41]
We're now at 45% proficient.
[1:26:44]
This is measured by,
[1:26:46]
the NH SAS and the SAT.
[1:26:48]
That number will change a little bit in November when we get updated numbers.
[1:26:52]
Our target is 65%.
[1:26:54]
Why is that lower than reading?
[1:26:56]
Because we started at a lower level in mathematics.
[1:26:59]
Equity and inclusion is pending.
[1:27:01]
I need to quantify some of that and some of our activities last year.
[1:27:06]
I will say we were not as aggressive
[1:27:09]
with equity and inclusion last year as we have been in past years.
[1:27:13]
It took a little bit of a backseat to academics.
[1:27:18]
And then team approach.
[1:27:20]
This is one we're really happy with.
[1:27:22]
This is our guiding coalition, essential actions.
[1:27:25]
We started at 20% in 2024, and we're now at 74% with a target goal of 90%.
[1:27:31]
I would flag that team approach and also continuous
[1:27:35]
improvement as precursors to everything else.
[1:27:39]
As we see those numbers get more solid.
[1:27:41]
We're going to see more improvement in other places
[1:27:44]
because our structures and things have taken hold.
[1:27:46]
So that's a high level overview.
[1:27:48]
When we presented to staff this,
[1:27:54]
past couple of weeks for the opening,
[1:27:55]
it was really great to be able to present
[1:27:59]
the places that we've been so successful over the past year.
[1:28:02]
You know, with our some of our academic growth,
[1:28:05]
certainly we had the education scorecard.
[1:28:08]
That was a great boost for us as well.
[1:28:11]
But that continuous improvement in team approach, where things that we were
[1:28:15]
really proud of, high level overview, Director Bickford will go deeper,
[1:28:20]
and I believe his CIA colleagues will also be supporting.
[1:28:24]
A number of guest stars this evening.
[1:28:25]
Excellent. Okay.
[1:28:27]
So before we get into actually looking at
[1:28:32]
we have K through a universal screening data for you this evening.
[1:28:36]
So we do universal screening three times a year fall winter and spring.
[1:28:41]
So use analogy. It's like,
[1:28:44]
taking a temperature check, you know, if you're feeling
[1:28:47]
well or you're feeling sick, you do a little quick temperature check.
[1:28:51]
Just tells you if like if everything's okay or you need to do something about it.
[1:28:56]
The reason why we do these things that are called universal screeners
[1:29:00]
or standardized assessments is they help us.
[1:29:04]
They give us a roadmap if we're on pace or not,
[1:29:06]
related to how we might do on the NH SAS.
[1:29:10]
So English language arts or mathematics.
[1:29:12]
That's the end of the year.
[1:29:14]
Some big Semenov.
[1:29:16]
After a year of learning, how are students doing on state standards?
[1:29:21]
So our universal screeners, what they're looking at is things like
[1:29:26]
early literacy skills, reading achievement like your foundational reading.
[1:29:30]
So word level reading, reading comprehension
[1:29:33]
vocabulary general knowledge kind of things.
[1:29:36]
Mathematics. Same thing.
[1:29:38]
We're looking at early numeracy skills calculation skills problem solving.
[1:29:42]
So typically when students take these universal screeners
[1:29:46]
they are correlated with success on a state sort of like end of year
[1:29:51]
subnet, like the NH SAS, like the ELA or mathematics.
[1:29:55]
Research has shown us like in general,
[1:30:00]
a score above the 40th percentile.
[1:30:02]
You have a good likelihood.
[1:30:04]
Doesn't mean always will.
[1:30:05]
But you have a better chance than not scoring proficient
[1:30:09]
or above proficient on on the statewide assessment in ELA or mathematics.
[1:30:15]
So that's kind of our our cut score that we use for low risk in the district.
[1:30:20]
Okay. So
[1:30:22]
any questions about universal screeners why we do it.
[1:30:26]
Fall. Winter is spring.
[1:30:29]
Okay cool.
[1:30:32]
We've shown you this slide in past presentations.
[1:30:36]
But we just want to read that when we talk about students and growth.
[1:30:42]
Sometimes when we look at fall to winter or winter to spring or fall to spring,
[1:30:48]
sometimes the the percentage of proficiency kind of stays the same.
[1:30:52]
And if you didn't know that the expectation
[1:30:55]
expectations change throughout the year, you might say, oh,
[1:30:59]
they were at 60% in the fall and they're 60% in the spring.
[1:31:03]
Students didn't grow. Well, that's not actually true.
[1:31:05]
So as expectations get increased around a year,
[1:31:09]
we're going to use a third grader who we're measuring oral reading fluency.
[1:31:14]
Just basically I put a passage in front of you.
[1:31:17]
You got to read it as quickly as you can in one minute.
[1:31:19]
So if we do that in the fall of third grade, the current norms.
[1:31:24]
So like basically to get a score at the 40th percentile,
[1:31:28]
you have to read 65 words per minute. Okay.
[1:31:31]
And then in the winter time when we sort of give you a same passage
[1:31:36]
of similar difficulty, you're now expected to read 91 words
[1:31:41]
and then to get the 40th percentile in the springtime.
[1:31:43]
Now you get to read 109.
[1:31:45]
So you're growing over time, but you're you're standing
[1:31:50]
when you compare yourselves to other kids is still at the 40th percentile.
[1:31:54]
So you're just making expected growth at that point in time.
[1:31:58]
Any questions about that?
[1:32:01]
Okay.
[1:32:02]
So I think we're going to go over some reading data first.
[1:32:06]
Yep. All right.
[1:32:09]
So we have.
[1:32:10]
In front of.
[1:32:10]
You here our district level.
[1:32:14]
Reading proficiency K to eight.
[1:32:16]
We have for elementary
[1:32:19]
we use M-class as a universal.
[1:32:24]
Screener for elementary students.
[1:32:25]
So this kind of shows you the example of what,
[1:32:33]
Oh, okay.
[1:32:36]
Do you need it soon?
[1:32:37]
Did you guys. Need it? It helps.
[1:32:38]
I just emailed it to everybody too. So.
[1:32:40]
Thank you. Okay.
[1:32:43]
So you can you can see there are growth.
[1:32:46]
Last year from fall, winter and spring,
[1:32:50]
on the M class.
[1:32:53]
And at the middle school, instead of,
[1:32:55]
like, the elementary school, They used STAR Reading.
[1:33:01]
Different for different.
[1:33:02]
Level of students.
[1:33:04]
And I just want to point out, you might look at
[1:33:09]
this area with the green bars and the line, and you might be like, oh, okay.
[1:33:14]
That's exactly what Travis was just talking about.
[1:33:17]
That's showing that's expected growth that it might look like it's stable there.
[1:33:22]
But remember, as the year goes on, that expectation is higher.
[1:33:26]
So. When you see something that's sort of the same,
[1:33:29]
they're growing as we're expecting them to grow.
[1:33:33]
So that's a that's positive. It's good.
[1:33:38]
Questions on those slides.
[1:33:41]
So by extension if I'm looking at KK4 does that mean they're growing at a pace
[1:33:46]
that's faster than we expected.
[1:33:50]
The district side.
[1:33:52]
Yes I would think from fall to spring if we.
[1:33:57]
Were you see it going up.
[1:33:58]
Yeah.
[1:33:58]
In the fall where it was 61.6 and in the spring is 69.
[1:34:03]
I, I see that as a more significant growth.
[1:34:06]
That's faster than expected, more growth than expected.
[1:34:10]
And remember this is our third year,
[1:34:13]
our third year with our new curriculums.
[1:34:15]
This is the year where I'm we're hoping and expecting to see growth like that.
[1:34:21]
We have incredible teachers and very hard working students as well.
[1:34:25]
And we're very fortunate to start seeing this growth a little early.
[1:34:29]
You're saying the third year is. This year that.
[1:34:31]
We have just begun. Now this year. Correct. Right.
[1:34:34]
So we're looking at year two data.
[1:34:36]
This is your two. Yeah. Fantastic.
[1:34:38]
That's great.
[1:34:39]
Just to clarify. To M-class doubles.
[1:34:41]
Is really looking at word level reading fluency reading skills.
[1:34:45]
STAR Reading. Is.
[1:34:47]
Is more of the application side of things.
[1:34:49]
We do implement STAR Reading.
[1:34:51]
In at the elementary. Level. Second.
[1:34:54]
Third. And fourth grade.
[1:34:56]
So it's just that it's.
[1:34:58]
Not a measure that we have for K.
[1:34:59]
For because we use for that.
[1:35:02]
So that's it's just. A different measure.
[1:35:07]
This is a.
[1:35:08]
Look at our subgroups within this.
[1:35:11]
We're certainly curious about a lot of the findings here.
[1:35:15]
We are very pleasantly pleased with the performance
[1:35:20]
of some of our historically marginalized populations.
[1:35:24]
And we have some curiosities about that
[1:35:27]
that we aren't prepared to speculate around.
[1:35:29]
But it's certainly catching our attention.
[1:35:31]
We want to know more about that.
[1:35:34]
Likewise, we want to know more about some of our students who are not
[1:35:38]
in a subpopulation that's not performing where we would expect.
[1:35:42]
So this just allows us a deeper dive into our student performance by subgroup
[1:35:47]
so that we can start to, learn about the things that are working
[1:35:52]
well for our students in some areas where we need to target.
[1:35:57]
I'm having a hard time understanding what I'm looking at.
[1:36:00]
So when it's a growth in a gap.
[1:36:04]
So you're looking at their performance.
[1:36:07]
The, the percentage of students who are in tier one in the fall versus
[1:36:12]
did they stay that way into the where they in tier one in the spring.
[1:36:18]
So that
[1:36:18]
means if you're looking at, for example,
[1:36:21]
female students, 62.8% were in tier one in the fall
[1:36:26]
and in the spring, 72.9% ended in tier one.
[1:36:30]
Okay. That means that some of our students.
[1:36:33]
Who were needing tier two or tier three interventions didn't no longer need them.
[1:36:37]
Yeah. Okay. Thank you.
[1:36:40]
And that trend was.
[1:36:42]
That. Is such.
[1:36:44]
An increase that it's we see that as an accelerated growth.
[1:36:48]
Yeah. Not just as a growth. Yeah.
[1:36:52]
Thank you.
[1:36:53]
Those are those are really high numbers.
[1:36:55]
Very happy.
[1:36:59]
Other questions there.
[1:37:07]
Likewise
[1:37:07]
you're looking at our district math performance.
[1:37:11]
You'll notice that it's grades two through eight.
[1:37:13]
We are going to address
[1:37:15]
kindergarten and first grade and why they aren't represented here.
[1:37:19]
At the end of this presentation, that's one of our takeaways.
[1:37:22]
We will also address why we don't have the high school represented here,
[1:37:27]
and what we plan to do about having some more timely data for them.
[1:37:32]
As you can see,
[1:37:35]
math, the
[1:37:38]
data isn't quite showing quite the growth that we're seeing in reading.
[1:37:43]
It is kind of expected.
[1:37:46]
But what we really want to see is 80% of our students being served by tier one.
[1:37:51]
So, right now that is not what we're seeing.
[1:37:55]
The it's pretty stable.
[1:37:57]
It's pretty expected.
[1:37:58]
But the one that I did notice at the middle level
[1:38:01]
that you might want to look at is the spring bar there, where
[1:38:04]
only 4% of students were in need of a tier three service, according to STAR.
[1:38:09]
And I think we said, but this is all STAR for math.
[1:38:14]
We don't use doubles. We use the store.
[1:38:16]
You said that.
[1:38:17]
Okay.
[1:38:17]
So, you can see that that number did decrease,
[1:38:22]
which we we like to see that number going down.
[1:38:25]
Right.
[1:38:30]
Yeah.
[1:38:30]
And then likewise. This is a similar.
[1:38:33]
Subgroup report.
[1:38:35]
For our math performance.
[1:38:37]
Some differences here with what we were seeing in our reading,
[1:38:42]
proficiency with our subgroup population.
[1:38:44]
And, and again, we have some things
[1:38:47]
that are certainly catching our attention that we need to dig into further.
[1:38:51]
And we do have some thoughts around that and some action
[1:38:54]
items around that that you'll hear about, in a few minutes.
[1:38:57]
In fact, we have things in place this year that are happening right now.
[1:39:01]
So we will tell you about those.
[1:39:04]
But this is,
[1:39:08]
not what we want to see
[1:39:09]
when we have subgroups decreasing.
[1:39:15]
Do you have any questions about that.
[1:39:19]
Is the the unknown race
[1:39:21]
which is a really remarkable achievement.
[1:39:25]
Is that a small population or how is that.
[1:39:29]
Well it's reportable so it's big enough that we can report on it.
[1:39:33]
But it's also self-identified. Okay.
[1:39:35]
So somebody when they register they say my race is unknown.
[1:39:40]
Sometimes people pick that for all different reasons.
[1:39:43]
Okay.
[1:39:46]
Question.
[1:39:52]
So we have
[1:39:54]
two more early morning indicator slides to show you.
[1:39:57]
So we want to give you also a
[1:40:00]
year end look at our attendance risk monitoring.
[1:40:04]
So this works different than the reading and math standardized data.
[1:40:09]
So with a standardized data we can dipstick
[1:40:12]
sort of fall winter and spring at three specific time points.
[1:40:16]
But when we're monitoring attendance we do continuously throughout the year.
[1:40:20]
So it's more of a rolling percentage kind of thing.
[1:40:23]
So overall for the district,
[1:40:26]
we hit the mark of what you want to focus on is the high risk
[1:40:31]
because that is your chronically absent population.
[1:40:34]
And so the federal definition for chronic absenteeism
[1:40:37]
is a 10% or more of scheduled school days.
[1:40:41]
So when we look at a student's attendance, they don't have to be here
[1:40:45]
the entire year.
[1:40:46]
They could be
[1:40:47]
like only here for one semester, but we can get a chronically absent
[1:40:50]
percentage based on the number of days they attended
[1:40:54]
and the number of days that were scheduled that for that period of time.
[1:40:59]
So we're
[1:41:00]
right at the target where we want to be as far as chronic absenteeism.
[1:41:04]
And you can see there are some
[1:41:05]
variations between elementary and secondary buildings.
[1:41:10]
I'm curious if you bump this against actual
[1:41:14]
like their academic performance,
[1:41:16]
because not all kids who are absent.
[1:41:20]
Will be. Will struggle. For academic, right?
[1:41:23]
So I'm just curious, like how much of the maybe in the yellow.
[1:41:27]
Yeah yeah yeah yeah
[1:41:30]
yeah. That would be interesting to look at.
[1:41:32]
Yeah.
[1:41:32]
We just knew we had a big agenda tonight, so we didn't want to load you up with
[1:41:37]
too many geeky slides.
[1:41:39]
Any questions?
[1:41:40]
Any other questions related to the attendance?
[1:41:42]
Why do we think attendance at the middle school is
[1:41:48]
more high risk than the high school?
[1:41:51]
Because being at 12, 13 and 14 year olds really hard.
[1:41:54]
So it's really it's really hard to,
[1:41:58]
Just say.
[1:42:00]
Bring it down to like a sole factor.
[1:42:02]
What could be contributing because it's
[1:42:04]
there are internal things that we can control from our standpoint,
[1:42:08]
from the school district as far as like instructional programing, how our students
[1:42:11]
are connecting with our faculty, our staff or administrators.
[1:42:15]
But there's also a lot of external factors that can come into play.
[1:42:19]
Health, student health, access
[1:42:22]
for student and family services in the community.
[1:42:25]
Jobs for families
[1:42:28]
shift their variations and things like that.
[1:42:31]
So, it can give us a signal of, like, what's going on.
[1:42:35]
But the root cause may have a several different explanations to it.
[1:42:40]
Am I.
[1:42:41]
Correct in remembering that this is historically what we see for attendance?
[1:42:45]
Middle school is always.
[1:42:46]
So coming out of Covid nationwide.
[1:42:49]
We saw a temporary boost in
[1:42:52]
sort of like chronic absenteeism
[1:42:55]
decreased coming out of it was much higher coming out of the the pandemic,
[1:43:00]
but it's kind of settled into a new norm.
[1:43:04]
So it is higher than pre-pandemic levels.
[1:43:09]
Interestingly enough, our attendance, our student
[1:43:12]
attendance is better than national trends and better than statewide trends.
[1:43:17]
It's not where we want to see it.
[1:43:19]
But we are doing better than the state average.
[1:43:24]
But this is something. That.
[1:43:26]
Even on,
[1:43:30]
My list
[1:43:31]
that I gave to you this year, in terms of my evaluation, attendance
[1:43:34]
is something that I really want to dig into.
[1:43:41]
And the second
[1:43:42]
indicator, early warning indicator, is behavior risk monitoring.
[1:43:45]
So that is calculated by looking at behavior
[1:43:49]
incidents or office discipline referrals.
[1:43:52]
So if there's like a a student violates a school wide rule or expectation,
[1:43:58]
that an office discipline referral could be filled out
[1:44:02]
and that's submitted to review for administration.
[1:44:05]
So there are like things that our teacher manage in the classroom
[1:44:08]
and may not warrant a like an office discipline referral right up.
[1:44:12]
So these are the ones that administration would take a look at.
[1:44:17]
So again, I will have to say looking at the winter
[1:44:21]
slide deck in comparison, we were healthier in the winter.
[1:44:25]
And I'm just wondering if the if the spring semester in the
[1:44:29]
the 60 days of March has anything to contribute to that.
[1:44:35]
And then it's 300 and.
[1:44:36]
60 days. Of March. March.
[1:44:38]
So we did see sort of more
[1:44:43]
office discipline referrals come in.
[1:44:45]
And this is spring only, or.
[1:44:47]
This is the entire.
[1:44:48]
Entire year.
[1:44:49]
Yep. Okay. Yep.
[1:44:56]
Any questions there?
[1:44:58]
One of the things when I was talking to staff is,
[1:45:02]
you know, okay, 13% are at high risk,
[1:45:05]
but for that 13%,
[1:45:08]
it feels like a lot more to staff.
[1:45:11]
You know, when you have kids that have six or more.
[1:45:15]
So I can say that the range of, one of the high risk
[1:45:20]
can't remember which particular school, but that cut is six plus.
[1:45:25]
And there was there were a couple of students that were above,
[1:45:29]
the 75 mark.
[1:45:32]
So you can see like that.
[1:45:33]
Like, so if we have students with that many office disciplinary referrals,
[1:45:37]
it has an impact on staffing as far as like the tiered levels of service.
[1:45:43]
So like your behavior specialists,
[1:45:44]
your administrators, your social workers, psychologists.
[1:45:49]
It's like there's a need there.
[1:45:51]
So that's when when Dr. Boston says like
[1:45:54]
that, that number can feel more.
[1:45:57]
That's that's why that intensification
[1:46:00]
is probably felt amongst staff. To.
[1:46:03]
That point. Is there?
[1:46:06]
I don't know if they're ethical considerations
[1:46:09]
to working the data this way, but would there be, a usefulness
[1:46:15]
to running a metric that's like
[1:46:18]
incidence per student, per campus? Yep.
[1:46:22]
So there's a couple of different ways you can summarize this data.
[1:46:25]
We're just summarizing it based on sort of our cut scores and risk.
[1:46:29]
If you want to do year to year comparisons, that's
[1:46:32]
when you use like a ratio number, like, a rate per
[1:46:36]
100 kind of thing because enrollment changes year to year.
[1:46:41]
And so if you want to compare like let's say seniors,
[1:46:45]
like how many like how many seniors, have,
[1:46:49]
you know, sort of office discipline referrals year over year.
[1:46:53]
But I think whatever your question is, you would need to use a rate per 100
[1:46:58]
because the the enrollment of those grades are different.
[1:47:01]
So like one one year might be we had 200 incidents
[1:47:05]
and then another year might be 175.
[1:47:07]
But because the enrollment was different,
[1:47:10]
maybe the 175 is actually a higher rate per 100, right?
[1:47:15]
Good question.
[1:47:19]
Okay.
[1:47:21]
No other questions.
[1:47:22]
I'm going to move on.
[1:47:25]
So at the beginning, Dr.
[1:47:27]
Boston showed you a slide that had the six pillars.
[1:47:30]
And one of the pillars is related to team approach
[1:47:34]
and guiding coalition is one of the the teams in our system.
[1:47:39]
So guiding coalition if you're paying attention
[1:47:43]
to try to guide and coalition is responsible
[1:47:48]
for a lot of the work that goes on here in our framework.
[1:47:52]
So this is what we call tier one.
[1:47:54]
And so anything in this like gold ultimately is the responsibility
[1:48:00]
of the sort of like the guiding coalition and the leadership team in the building.
[1:48:05]
So that can include support from the SA,
[1:48:08]
that can include support from our educational specialists.
[1:48:12]
But what we're looking at is over time, when we officially decided
[1:48:16]
to implement our framework, the first year that we did a
[1:48:23]
fidelity implementation rubric, we were only at 20% of
[1:48:26]
the essential actions of that guiding coalition installed.
[1:48:30]
So your central actions are these colored bars that are in green,
[1:48:34]
yellow and red.
[1:48:35]
And over the past three years, we've gone for 20%
[1:48:39]
installed to 74% installed.
[1:48:42]
The things that are green are kind of like the structures
[1:48:45]
and the routines of our professional learning communities.
[1:48:49]
So those are pretty solid in place.
[1:48:52]
General rule of thumb is I want to see things above 80%,
[1:48:55]
because that tells me things are installed enough
[1:48:58]
to get the known outcomes from what we're expecting sort of thing.
[1:49:02]
Okay.
[1:49:03]
So if it's below that, then we we have a much harder time deciding if
[1:49:08]
if it was like by chance, like we got the results or we didn't
[1:49:12]
get the improvement that we want, the areas that are queued for.
[1:49:16]
I would say like priority in the future are going to be sort of teaching
[1:49:20]
essential schoolwide social and academic behaviors across K through 12.
[1:49:26]
And then the other part is proactive prevention supports.
[1:49:30]
So this is how I use my cursor.
[1:49:33]
Again like these tears. This is tier two.
[1:49:37]
This is tier three.
[1:49:38]
How these tears are sort of like structured organized
[1:49:41]
and how we deploy our resources within those tears.
[1:49:46]
So that's that's the priority.
[1:49:48]
I would say we're at a point
[1:49:49]
where we can start focusing on the tier two and tier three essential actions,
[1:49:53]
because there's enough of a base in tier one to start looking at that.
[1:50:00]
Any questions there?
[1:50:04]
Okay.
[1:50:05]
And then on the right hand
[1:50:07]
side of our triangle we have the collaborative teacher teams.
[1:50:11]
So these could be your grade level in elementary school your grade
[1:50:15]
level teams middle school are going to be your your teams of four
[1:50:21]
department teams.
[1:50:22]
And the high school also has content and department.
[1:50:26]
Yep. Okay.
[1:50:28]
So the dark Navy is our district overall.
[1:50:31]
Again we're close to that 80% threshold.
[1:50:33]
And then we have bars in green and yellow.
[1:50:37]
And again tier one as far as like
[1:50:41]
infrastructure and the collaborative collaborative structures
[1:50:45]
those are in place.
[1:50:47]
Now it's time to kind of like
[1:50:48]
focus on more of the tier two aspects of of that framework.
[1:50:53]
So this golden sort of outline sort of shows that,
[1:50:59]
collaborative teacher
[1:51:00]
teams, they take the lead on essential standards
[1:51:04]
that we're focusing on early literacy, numeracy.
[1:51:08]
We're also focused on the standards related to like ELA, mathematics.
[1:51:13]
It could be science studies.
[1:51:15]
Those teachers take the lead on the initial instruction instruction
[1:51:18]
that all students get if they're entitled to a mandated learning plan or not.
[1:51:24]
And then we have students that are going to need supplemental support.
[1:51:28]
And so that supplemental support could be they need
[1:51:31]
they're missing some prerequisite skills related to the essential standard.
[1:51:35]
Or they might need Extension or Richmond.
[1:51:39]
So that's part of the cycle that we need to work on.
[1:51:42]
Next is more that sort of that supplemental part.
[1:51:48]
The questions about the teacher
[1:51:49]
team essential actions.
[1:51:52]
Okay.
[1:51:54]
So what are we doing about all this now.
[1:51:56]
Okay. So
[1:51:58]
because we track we use process related
[1:52:01]
assessment to monitor what is installed and what's not installed.
[1:52:05]
We also grab the academic data from universal screening and the NH SAS.
[1:52:11]
That helps us make data informed decisions about projects
[1:52:14]
that need to be sort of cued for priority for the district.
[1:52:18]
So we have a variety of things that are
[1:52:21]
currently happening in the district right now.
[1:52:24]
I'll quickly go over them.
[1:52:26]
So M-class math K1.
[1:52:29]
You might have noticed that Director Krans pointed out we have a gap
[1:52:33]
on the mast side where it only shows grades two through eight.
[1:52:36]
So we're closing that gap by bringing in a K
[1:52:39]
through one early numeracy screener.
[1:52:43]
So that will be in place until the end of this strategic plan.
[1:52:47]
At the high school, Principal Driscoll, myself.
[1:52:49]
Director Krans.
[1:52:52]
Director Mehalek, we
[1:52:54]
worked together to talk about bringing star up to the high school,
[1:52:57]
because what's challenging is getting timely, universal screening data
[1:53:03]
to help inform the health of tier one at the high school level.
[1:53:06]
We only have the the school day sat, so it really makes it hard to cover those
[1:53:12]
ninth graders, those 10th graders, by the time they're taking that, it's it's
[1:53:15]
too much of a gap.
[1:53:16]
So this year we're going to bring STAR Reading and Math
[1:53:19]
to the high school two times this year.
[1:53:23]
So I believe November administration and then the high school
[1:53:26]
also administer in the springtime with the other buildings.
[1:53:29]
FastBridge progress monitoring.
[1:53:33]
We are we're trying to find a solution just y k through 12
[1:53:38]
to have a common progress monitoring system that's going to assess,
[1:53:43]
sort of like skills related to reading and mathematics.
[1:53:47]
The proxy monitoring is typically done with like a one minute quick probe.
[1:53:51]
It's called a curriculum based measurement.
[1:53:53]
And these need to be administered either weekly or by weekly kind of thing.
[1:53:57]
So we are trying to find a user friendly system.
[1:54:01]
The one that we have currently is it's gotten some I would say,
[1:54:07]
there's been some challenges with the usability of the platform.
[1:54:11]
So we're looking for a better solution, and we're starting with the high school
[1:54:15]
this year because of priority projects.
[1:54:19]
Is not going to allow us to do that with K through eight at this time.
[1:54:22]
Do do do do.
[1:54:24]
One thing that we are trying to solve going forward in the future is,
[1:54:30]
when students transition from elementary
[1:54:32]
to middle school to high school, we want to have an intervention history.
[1:54:36]
So if I was a student in second grade that was meeting with a reading
[1:54:40]
specialist, and I got an intervention, and then as a sixth grader,
[1:54:45]
I'm struggling with some reading related kind of challenges.
[1:54:48]
I should be able to, like, click into a student history
[1:54:50]
and see that they had an intervention back in second grade kind of thing.
[1:54:54]
So that's one of the things that we're trying to do is, from a system standpoint,
[1:54:59]
provide a case history for student if they had an intervention or not.
[1:55:03]
And one of the benefits of doing that is that we can have progress
[1:55:08]
monitoring data tied to the intervention plan and see how they're doing.
[1:55:11]
So that's another initiative that will be going on throughout the year.
[1:55:14]
Two. To two.
[1:55:17]
As far as instructional programs, Director Hemphill is brought in a English
[1:55:22]
language development program called HMH English 3D.
[1:55:26]
I believe that's a pilot that was approved by the Advisory Council.
[1:55:32]
Within the past month,
[1:55:34]
we're really excited about a new math intervention program.
[1:55:38]
So you've kind of seen our math scores kind of their stable.
[1:55:41]
So kids are making growth, but we need.
[1:55:43]
We noticed that we had a gap in our intervention program for math.
[1:55:47]
There's a ton of stuff out there for reading math.
[1:55:49]
There's less things that are evidence based.
[1:55:52]
So we we're very fortunate to find a evidence
[1:55:55]
based intervention program called accumulative.
[1:55:58]
It's by an organization called JUMP Math.
[1:56:01]
And that's going to be available K through 12 for tier
[1:56:04]
three in IP intervention services.
[1:56:08]
Then
[1:56:11]
I feel like Director Krans your math lab with the high school.
[1:56:14]
This is your the. Yeah.
[1:56:16]
I don't want to take a lot of time. Yeah.
[1:56:19]
So this is
[1:56:21]
a huge project that Dean Lapoint, Principal Driscoll,
[1:56:26]
and Dean Lyndes at the high school have been working on.
[1:56:29]
We have some co-teaching going on at the high school, meaning that there's
[1:56:33]
a special educator and a general educator working together, team teaching.
[1:56:36]
And this is the Math Lab, which has a general educator,
[1:56:40]
math teacher, and a special educator teaching algebra one together on one day.
[1:56:45]
And then on the alternate day, they are, supporting students in a lab
[1:56:50]
that is providing tier two and three support.
[1:56:54]
So this is and they're using a cumulative to help with that, as
[1:56:57]
well as our tier one programing and some other resources that we have.
[1:57:01]
So we are very excited.
[1:57:02]
This has huge potential to really make a big difference for our students.
[1:57:09]
Yes I can take the next to Yep.
[1:57:12]
So also we're focusing on math instructional practices.
[1:57:15]
Director Hemphill has brought instructional practices to the,
[1:57:21]
elementary that are going to be rolled out two at a time per trimester.
[1:57:24]
So they're going to be kind of focusing at two instructional practices,
[1:57:28]
high leverage research based at the middle school.
[1:57:32]
We took a different approach because the teachers only teach math.
[1:57:35]
So they're going to be selecting,
[1:57:38]
which of the high leverage practices
[1:57:41]
they choose to focus on as their personal goal or their team goal.
[1:57:45]
And then we are bringing supplemental math fluency.
[1:57:49]
I can speak to grade five specifically.
[1:57:51]
Dean Brickley and Principal Dube have worked really hard
[1:57:54]
to put a section into the school day every day.
[1:57:57]
Focus on
[1:57:58]
math fluency for fifth graders, which we are very happy about.
[1:58:02]
That is a big need.
[1:58:03]
And you have it for elementary, too.
[1:58:05]
I don't really know as much about that.
[1:58:08]
For elementary math fact fluency,
[1:58:11]
this this is one of the big predictors for future math success.
[1:58:15]
It sets you up to do math word problems, skill application.
[1:58:20]
So we have brought in curriculum advisory Council last year
[1:58:24]
approved a program called Reflex and Frax, which is an independent student
[1:58:29]
platform where it's got some game based math fact fluency.
[1:58:34]
It has one of the highest effect sizes in the landscape in the field.
[1:58:38]
As far as student in on mathematic fact fluency.
[1:58:43]
So most of the to give you
[1:58:46]
some context, most of the field has these programs at a
[1:58:49]
like a point 2 to 0.3 effect size.
[1:58:54]
The programs that we brought in were 0.7 to 0.8.
[1:58:57]
So more than double the field standard as far as the fact size.
[1:59:01]
So we're. Super. Excited about that.
[1:59:03]
And then finally but last but not least, I should say,
[1:59:09]
each of the five buildings has made a sort of end of year
[1:59:12]
goal related to tier two, those social behavioral interventions.
[1:59:16]
So that could be a variety of different things
[1:59:18]
related to I'm a kiddo that might need some.
[1:59:22]
I have some unfinished learning
[1:59:23]
regarding social skills, and I need to learn some social skills.
[1:59:27]
It could be organizational skills.
[1:59:29]
It could be emotional regulation skills.
[1:59:32]
These are typically interventions that last between 8 to 10 weeks.
[1:59:37]
They are very skilled focus.
[1:59:39]
This is not clinical mental health counseling because we're trying
[1:59:43]
to teach positive behavior skills kind of thing.
[1:59:46]
So they would be run by an intervention provider likely either a,
[1:59:51]
a psychologist, a school counselor or a school social worker.
[1:59:54]
And administrators have provided these interventions.
[1:59:58]
They're typically with students in a group of 3 to 5 students
[2:00:02]
and role playing, direct instruction and sort of progress monitoring is expected.
[2:00:07]
Out of these.
[2:00:08]
Are those teacher selected groups.
[2:00:10]
Teachers can make a referral to our site intervention team,
[2:00:13]
and the site intervention team will match the student to an intervention.
[2:00:17]
We have some,
[2:00:19]
kind of like with reading, you can do a diagnostic to match
[2:00:22]
where the, the skill, the underlying skill need is.
[2:00:25]
We have kind of the same thing with our, our behavior interventions.
[2:00:30]
They'll tell you like what is the priority.
[2:00:32]
And a team would have to decide okay.
[2:00:35]
Like out of these eight topics what is the top priority for the student
[2:00:39]
at this point in time.
[2:00:40]
So they might need like multiple interventions.
[2:00:43]
But we can't we can't give them all at the same time
[2:00:47]
because they just wouldn't be in class kind of thing.
[2:00:49]
So teams might have to prioritize the intervention cycle for a particular skill
[2:00:53]
and then move on to the next skill once they've mastered the initial cycle.
[2:00:59]
Thank you.
[2:01:01]
While we were sitting here, I pulled up the presentation
[2:01:03]
from last fall to look at the behavior incidents per 100 students.
[2:01:08]
You are right. March is right up there.
[2:01:11]
But I made a flag in it to,
[2:01:15]
put the rest of the 2526 data in there.
[2:01:19]
Bring it back to you next month so you can see that comparatively.
[2:01:23]
And we can run that slide annually.
[2:01:25]
So we can start to have some longitudinal data that you have in the same format.
[2:01:30]
So you're comparing apples to apples.
[2:01:31]
And this data all goes on our website under the accountability tab.
[2:01:38]
We post the presentations there.
[2:01:40]
Anybody can look at it.
[2:01:44]
Just to be transparent
[2:01:45]
about where we are and where we aren't.
[2:01:49]
Can I ask a question on the first or second slide,
[2:01:52]
then the the data that's pending for equity and inclusion.
[2:01:55]
Did you say like what the what's a workable timeline for
[2:01:59]
some data for 2026 in that category.
[2:02:03]
Yeah. So I need to go back.
[2:02:05]
So that is a less clean metric in that we have to take
[2:02:10]
building reports of activities and then quantify it into a number.
[2:02:14]
So I can aim for probably by November.
[2:02:19]
I can have something for you. Great.
[2:02:21]
I'm not expecting a lot of growth in that category this year, in part
[2:02:26]
because it was a little less of a focus with the academic piece, but also
[2:02:31]
because there are several areas that we've identified.
[2:02:35]
We're not going to be able to move the needle
[2:02:37]
without some help from our state and federal partners.
[2:02:41]
When we talk about
[2:02:44]
hiring and retention
[2:02:46]
of a more diverse workforce,
[2:02:49]
we have policies.
[2:02:51]
We have plans.
[2:02:52]
Mr. Boodey worked with a subgroup that worked on that to,
[2:02:56]
make sure we had things in place to retain
[2:02:59]
and attract a diverse workforce.
[2:03:02]
But if people aren't moving to New Hampshire, we're not getting,
[2:03:07]
you know, even the opportunity to hire a diverse workforce.
[2:03:11]
So there were some things like that that we looked at and went, we're ready.
[2:03:15]
But some of our, you know,
[2:03:19]
what's happening in the state is not helping us.
[2:03:23]
So there's a barrier there that's hard for us to address.
[2:03:27]
But you're not saying
[2:03:29]
that some of the state and federal aversion to equity
[2:03:34]
and inclusion is affecting our goals here as well, or is that also.
[2:03:41]
If I think
[2:03:43]
it would be difficult to not have it impact that, yes.
[2:03:46]
Things. Are.
[2:03:47]
Being flagged, certain words are being flagged.
[2:03:50]
I will say the work
[2:03:53]
that is being done in Dover,
[2:03:56]
if anybody is attracting
[2:03:58]
people interested in that, it's us.
[2:04:02]
You know, and we've had people say in interviews and things
[2:04:06]
like that, or when I meet with them or when we do the new,
[2:04:09]
new teacher induction, they talk about that, that's something
[2:04:12]
attractive to them,
[2:04:13]
that everyone is welcome here and everyone is recognized here. So,
[2:04:18]
but yeah, it's a challenge if we can't get people to
[2:04:20]
cross the state line between Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
[2:04:23]
I don't have any hope to hire them.
[2:04:26]
So yeah that's challenging.
[2:04:29]
Thank you.
[2:04:32]
I was trying to be as easy as possible. Yes.
[2:04:37]
I need
[2:04:39]
feedback.
[2:04:40]
Thank you.
[2:04:41]
See I a office as always.
[2:04:47]
The last item for new business tonight is
[2:04:51]
the New Hampshire School Boards Association policy proposals.
[2:04:55]
Micaela, you had brought this agenda item forward.
[2:04:57]
Can I interrupt for one minute? Yeah.
[2:05:01]
I'm proposing that we're letting everyone go.
[2:05:04]
That does not want to stay for the school board association stuff.
[2:05:08]
Because we all have kids.
[2:05:09]
But along meeting and you have to be at work early tomorrow.
[2:05:11]
So though.
[2:05:13]
It is riveting work.
[2:05:16]
It's all. It's all state policy things.
[2:05:19]
So please,
[2:05:21]
you can't leave though.
[2:05:25]
Thank you.
[2:05:26]
Not that I don't want you to stay, but,
[2:05:31]
So, Micaela, my understanding was
[2:05:33]
you were looking for board feedback or, I guess, consensus.
[2:05:39]
Or as far as the.
[2:05:42]
Were you looking for feedback on all of the proposed
[2:05:45]
changes at NHSBA and, and NHSBA is making as far as how
[2:05:51]
meetings are structured, or are you just looking for feedback on the,
[2:05:55]
resolutions?
[2:05:57]
Yeah.
[2:05:58]
So I mean, October 17th is the annual delegate meeting.
[2:06:01]
This will be third or fourth year going.
[2:06:04]
I cannot vote on behalf of the school board unless we have an on
[2:06:08]
the record statement of the school board's opinion on these 15 proposals.
[2:06:12]
So this this process is,
[2:06:16]
a slightly augmented version of what we do every year,
[2:06:19]
only because they are proposing kind of like throwing out the book
[2:06:25]
and rewriting it this year when it comes to how they do the proposals.
[2:06:29]
I'm going to propose that we start with
[2:06:32]
just going through the 15, resolutions
[2:06:36]
so I know how to vote based on how the board has voted.
[2:06:39]
And I'd love to move through these, like quickly. Yeah.
[2:06:41]
And I'm so I'm.
[2:06:42]
Going to propose or suggest instead of going through them
[2:06:46]
one by one because there are 15 of them.
[2:06:49]
We all had the agenda materials to review ahead of time. So
[2:06:56]
I think if
[2:06:57]
there's any resolution that anyone wants to flag in particular
[2:07:01]
about having concerns about or not agreeing with the
[2:07:07]
NHSBA recommendation, as far as the resolution, I think maybe
[2:07:11]
let's just address it that way instead of going through each one one by one.
[2:07:16]
Does that work for everyone?
[2:07:19]
I and I think I can say I read through them all.
[2:07:24]
I agreed with the responses from NHSBA on all of them.
[2:07:29]
I wanted to call out for number 14, which was in relation
[2:07:33]
to the open enrollment.
[2:07:36]
I think the response was no position.
[2:07:40]
And so the only one I made on that one was just to clarify that we're going to
[2:07:45]
it said to stick with the 2025 continuing resolution,
[2:07:49]
which is that NHSBA opposes state mandated open enrollment.
[2:07:52]
Which was ours to begin with.
[2:07:53]
We were the one forward last year, so two years ago.
[2:07:56]
But other than that, I agreed with the NHSBA response
[2:08:01]
on all of the resolutions that were in the packet.
[2:08:05]
Agreed.
[2:08:06]
So the one that I do want to bring forward
[2:08:09]
is our resolution, which is resolution number two.
[2:08:13]
The reason why I would like the board's
[2:08:17]
permission to move forward with
[2:08:20]
disagreeing with the board's, not our board,
[2:08:24]
and be a board position to not support,
[2:08:29]
is because I think there's a fundamental difference
[2:08:32]
in how they're reading it versus how it was intended to be written.
[2:08:36]
I, I'm just going to read the notes I wrote because it's faster.
[2:08:41]
I wrote, well, my handwritten notes.
[2:08:43]
HB 1300, which is, you know, the, the bill
[2:08:47]
that will put the ballot question, on our ballot this November.
[2:08:52]
Does not enact a state mandated school tax cap.
[2:08:55]
It just puts the question on the ballot.
[2:08:58]
So those are two really important distinctions.
[2:09:03]
So only partially relates here.
[2:09:05]
The provisions of that bill will sunset anyway in fiscal year 2031.
[2:09:11]
So they're temporary to begin with.
[2:09:14]
The resolution that I had proposed and that we agreed on
[2:09:16]
was simple on purpose because it,
[2:09:20]
it talks about enacting a statewide school budget cap,
[2:09:23]
not putting a ballot question on a ballot, which is which is different.
[2:09:29]
And we have seen in the past that our some legislators, not all of them,
[2:09:33]
have proposed legislation that enacts a statewide mandated budget cap.
[2:09:38]
And that, to me, is a completely separate lane than what HB 1300 is currently doing
[2:09:44]
right now, which is putting the question before communities.
[2:09:48]
So I with with the board's approval, would still like to advance this forward
[2:09:53]
because having something on the books that says we oppose legislation
[2:09:58]
that enacts a statewide school budget cap is a different conversation
[2:10:03]
then than what we're seeing currently happen.
[2:10:08]
Potentially,
[2:10:09]
potentially happen, depending on the lawsuit.
[2:10:12]
On our ballot this November. Yeah.
[2:10:15]
So that's the only one that that for me, like, rises up to a discussion standpoint.
[2:10:19]
Other than that, Robin, I agree. I,
[2:10:22]
I agree with everything that we,
[2:10:25]
what was proposed by.
[2:10:26]
I think that point makes sense.
[2:10:27]
If you I would feel comfortable
[2:10:29]
if you want to make that point at the meeting and see what happens
[2:10:33]
as far as the resolution.
[2:10:34]
Make that clarification about the statewide versus the local control.
[2:10:37]
I'm seeing everybody's head nods.
[2:10:39]
Does that feel like concurrence?
[2:10:41]
I mean, they they say in a lot of them that they already have
[2:10:45]
resolutions against things, whereas this one, they don't say that.
[2:10:47]
They just say they advocated against it.
[2:10:49]
So to your point, they
[2:10:52]
just because this is there now
[2:10:53]
doesn't mean it's the end of the road for this, that
[2:10:55]
there's not going to be attempts beyond what they already have or in a couple
[2:10:59]
of years, if this fails a couple times, that they don't have a new approach to it.
[2:11:02]
So it wouldn't be the worst to still try and get something in there.
[2:11:06]
Well, and it was such an egregious bill to begin with, and its original form that,
[2:11:10]
you know, like it said, there they they vehemently or vigorously
[2:11:14]
whatever the word was advocated against it,
[2:11:16]
even though there wasn't a policy on the books.
[2:11:18]
Okay. So
[2:11:21]
like zooming right along.
[2:11:22]
Does anybody have anything else where they would be different
[2:11:26]
than what the board recommended for their
[2:11:31]
action, their position?
[2:11:34]
So speedy. Love it. Okay.
[2:11:35]
The other thing we need to talk about, because I will have to also vote on this,
[2:11:38]
is do we agree with the like pretty sweeping comprehensive
[2:11:42]
change to how all of this happens starting next year?
[2:11:47]
It was my reading of it, which is that instead of going through this process
[2:11:51]
every single year and proposing new ones
[2:11:55]
and retaining the ones, the long, long list of ones that already exist,
[2:12:00]
that instead, every two years at the start of the legislative session,
[2:12:04]
they wipe the slate clean or not wipe the slate clean,
[2:12:06]
but they go back through and they they have to kind of re-up.
[2:12:09]
You know, we have to vote again.
[2:12:10]
Like, does this still apply? Is it still relevant?
[2:12:14]
So that
[2:12:14]
happens in the even years, which would be,
[2:12:18]
intentionally right before the start of the new biennium.
[2:12:21]
And then in the odd years, you do something similar to kind of
[2:12:24]
what we have had before, more like learning.
[2:12:27]
It's just a big change.
[2:12:28]
We have to vote yes or no on it because it's a bylaws change.
[2:12:32]
Thoughts?
[2:12:34]
I think that makes sense.
[2:12:36]
The change.
[2:12:37]
Yeah.
[2:12:38]
Looking at it by annually, is that the correct term by biennially by any.
[2:12:43]
Yeah.
[2:12:43]
Well because that would better align
[2:12:47]
with the legislative session as it stands currently.
[2:12:50]
Yeah.
[2:12:53]
Any opposition to me voting.
[2:12:55]
I'm not going to lie I skimmed the changes to the articles.
[2:13:00]
I didn't read them all line by line.
[2:13:02]
So I'm going to go by your recommendation on this one.
[2:13:05]
Yeah.
[2:13:07]
Is it a less
[2:13:07]
deliberative process the change or.
[2:13:11]
No. The.
[2:13:18]
So what it says
[2:13:19]
in the kind of little primer about it,
[2:13:24]
and even years.
[2:13:25]
NHSBA will host a Legislative Policy conference meeting where the association
[2:13:29]
legislative priorities will be established by member school
[2:13:33]
boards.
[2:13:38]
These principles and policies will serve as to guide
[2:13:41]
the association in its advocacy activities for the biennium.
[2:13:45]
Legislative policy positions will be effective for two years
[2:13:50]
and therefore two legislative sessions,
[2:13:52]
but one budget biennium.
[2:13:55]
At subsequent ones, members may re-adopted
[2:13:58]
existing policies, introduce new ones, or remove existing ones.
[2:14:02]
So it's it's like how Dover votes for its school board every two years.
[2:14:06]
There's a potential for the whole slate to be changed.
[2:14:09]
You know what?
[2:14:09]
You what you keep you keep what you don't, you renew.
[2:14:15]
The thing
[2:14:15]
for me that was interesting is that it requires a two thirds vote,
[2:14:18]
which is more than, what is current, which I believe is just a simple majority.
[2:14:25]
And then in the odd years, they host an annual business meeting.
[2:14:27]
That's interesting because it's going to incorporate more learning
[2:14:31]
and collegial type stuff.
[2:14:35]
Professional development training conferences
[2:14:37]
with presentation, guest speaker opportunity for board members
[2:14:41]
to interact with each other, which is really cool.
[2:14:45]
That's that's the main difference right there.
[2:14:48]
They're also shrinking their board from
[2:14:50]
17 to 1413.
[2:14:55]
I forget the exact number.
[2:14:56]
They're taking a couple people out of the board.
[2:15:00]
Like 13.
[2:15:00]
Those are the those are the cliff notes. Okay.
[2:15:03]
Thank you. Yeah.
[2:15:05]
So we are we're all good with voting. Yes.
[2:15:07]
For proceeding with that.
[2:15:09]
Can I please have a motion to authorize Micaela to vote? Yes.
[2:15:14]
At the NHSBA meeting, as discussed.
[2:15:16]
So moved. Second.
[2:15:18]
Any additional discussion?
[2:15:20]
All those in favor?
[2:15:22]
Motion passes 7 to 0. Thank you.
[2:15:25]
Thank you for anyone. Who would like to come with me.
[2:15:27]
It's October 17th, and it's a pretty fun hey.
[2:15:29]
Dover Band show day. That's a big day.
[2:15:35]
Good point.
[2:15:36]
Okay.
[2:15:37]
Can I please have a motion on the bills?
[2:15:39]
You might.
[2:15:40]
I move to approve the submission of payment of bills in the amount
[2:15:44]
of $13,680,169.60
[2:15:48]
for the period of August 14th, 2026 through September 11th, 2026.
[2:15:54]
Seconded. Michelle. Seconds. Any discussion?
[2:15:57]
Roll call. Vote, please. Robin.
[2:15:59]
Yes. Michelle. Clancy. Yes. Craig.
[2:16:02]
Fogarty. Yes.
[2:16:03]
Micaela. Demeter.
[2:16:04]
Yes. Elizabeth goldman.
[2:16:06]
Yes. Seana Berkley Hallberg. Yes.
[2:16:08]
You passed seven. Nothing. You.
[2:16:10]
And then moving on to committee report. Yes.
[2:16:14]
The JBC.
[2:16:17]
First and foremost, we got some feedback from someone
[2:16:19]
in the community that they hadn't seen progress on the fields.
[2:16:22]
And I'm up here every week or every month saying lots going on.
[2:16:25]
What's going on?
[2:16:26]
And I realize that,
[2:16:29]
it's not always easy to see that I know what to look for
[2:16:31]
or what should be happening when I go through there,
[2:16:33]
and it's tough to see some of the changes sometimes.
[2:16:34]
So one thing that will help everyone
[2:16:36]
see what's going on in that field now is our old maintenance facility.
[2:16:39]
Building is down.
[2:16:40]
The new building is set
[2:16:41]
up, operational facilities maintenance has moved into there.
[2:16:44]
You get better visibility on the site, the football field itself,
[2:16:48]
the playing surface, excluding the goalposts, is ready to go.
[2:16:53]
On that field, lines are in turfs and in fills in.
[2:16:57]
Everything's in there.
[2:16:59]
And, scoreboard is on order.
[2:17:01]
That's the other piece that's missing there.
[2:17:04]
Bleachers up, lights up, all of that.
[2:17:06]
The baseball field has been a lot of work or.
[2:17:08]
Sorry, multi-purpose field has been a lot of work in the last month.
[2:17:12]
If you've gone by recently, you'll see that the light poles are up.
[2:17:16]
A really cool part of that, too.
[2:17:17]
If you look in center
[2:17:18]
field of that field, of what will be the baseball field portion of it.
[2:17:22]
You'll notice there's one pole with lights on both sides.
[2:17:25]
When we did this plan, we designed it so that we could use that single pole
[2:17:29]
for both fields, which saves the purchase of a pole and some electrical.
[2:17:33]
We didn't have the lights up there originally,
[2:17:35]
but it was designed so that lights for both fields could go on that one pole.
[2:17:40]
Which is is really cool.
[2:17:41]
Also, around that field, you'll see fence posts have gone up around most of it.
[2:17:46]
The backstop is about 30ft tall.
[2:17:47]
The rest of it looks to be about eight feet roughly.
[2:17:51]
That's going to be the perimeter of the field itself.
[2:17:54]
So it gives you a sense of where that field is going to be positioned.
[2:17:58]
You'll know this when you're looking at it
[2:18:00]
between the field and the animal science building.
[2:18:03]
A lot of empty space is going to be a nice green space.
[2:18:05]
The original plan was a parking lot there,
[2:18:07]
but we removed that in the late stages of the the project.
[2:18:10]
So it's going to be some green space.
[2:18:13]
Between there.
[2:18:14]
The field itself is being leveled.
[2:18:16]
There's some drainage that's going to get set up, and then they'll start working on
[2:18:22]
the concrete anchor that goes around it, like they did at the football
[2:18:25]
field as well, to prepare it for turf install there.
[2:18:29]
The track install I wasn't able to see today if it started today.
[2:18:33]
We were hoping to start this last week.
[2:18:35]
Weather delayed it.
[2:18:36]
We're at the point of putting the rubberized surface on the track.
[2:18:39]
It's a four week process to put that down.
[2:18:43]
It needs to sit for a period of time.
[2:18:46]
It needs to be lined.
[2:18:48]
I mentioned, I believe, last meeting.
[2:18:49]
There's like three families in the country
[2:18:51]
that do this one comes from Pennsylvania, so it's very specific.
[2:18:54]
And you need weather to cooperate during that window.
[2:18:56]
And the day we plan on starting, it was last Tuesday
[2:18:58]
and there was some rain last week.
[2:19:01]
Things like that.
[2:19:02]
So it got pushed back.
[2:19:03]
We're hoping that still, starts this week.
[2:19:07]
There was talk of falsely starting yesterday. It rained.
[2:19:09]
I drove by today.
[2:19:10]
I did see some more vehicles
[2:19:11]
in that area on the track, but I have I wasn't able to see.
[2:19:15]
I tried to drive around before the meeting,
[2:19:16]
but there was a bus unloading team in the backside of the school,
[2:19:19]
so I couldn't get in close enough to see it.
[2:19:22]
I just came straight to the meeting.
[2:19:25]
So that's where we're at on all of that.
[2:19:27]
In terms of budget, we're still projecting
[2:19:30]
the coming under budget on everything that we have going in there,
[2:19:35]
and when we will get on that field is still up in the air.
[2:19:40]
As I said, the field itself is if it was as simple as going on the football field,
[2:19:45]
throw the goalposts up that fields ready to play.
[2:19:48]
A lot of other factors.
[2:19:50]
The bleachers need to be inspected.
[2:19:51]
Bathrooms are not operational yet.
[2:19:54]
The concourse area in the entryway is still dirt.
[2:19:56]
That's not concrete.
[2:19:57]
And everything around it is an active construction zone.
[2:20:00]
So there's.
[2:20:01]
We need inspections to come through.
[2:20:03]
We we're still.
[2:20:04]
We signed a memorandum of understanding on the bathroom situation.
[2:20:09]
You know, if you remember, I mentioned this project
[2:20:12]
we were told needed something like 120 toilets based on the size,
[2:20:16]
and they base that on how much can this facility hold?
[2:20:19]
And they even include what if we had a major political figure
[2:20:22]
speaking here and we had 4000 people on the field?
[2:20:24]
So we had to put in pan of hardware in the gates for that.
[2:20:28]
So we came to an understanding on the bathroom situation
[2:20:31]
that we think is is manageable for the district.
[2:20:34]
And allows for upscaling if we do have those larger scale events.
[2:20:38]
But that still, I believe needs to be signed on the city side.
[2:20:42]
We've agreed to it, but we haven't gotten confirmation they signed it yet.
[2:20:45]
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
[2:20:48]
Good sign.
[2:20:48]
Okay.
[2:20:48]
That's up to sign. Okay, so we have that.
[2:20:52]
Like I said, we have inspections on the bleachers.
[2:20:54]
Concessions isn't up and running.
[2:20:56]
The biggest hurdle we're going to have is getting a temporary occupancy permit
[2:21:01]
for that field to safely get people in and out.
[2:21:04]
If we were to have a game there this fall where it's an active construction zone,
[2:21:08]
and can we create an environment that separates those fans
[2:21:12]
in that environment from what's still going on in the multi-purpose field?
[2:21:17]
So we don't have any of the thing definitive yet.
[2:21:21]
We're still keeping those two dates in October where there's potential home
[2:21:24]
games. I want to say the 15th and 22nd.
[2:21:27]
I think those two those are the two Fridays.
[2:21:30]
If we can, we will.
[2:21:32]
But we're not positive yet.
[2:21:34]
And we want to make sure that it's safe and it's ready for public consumption
[2:21:38]
when we bring people in there.
[2:21:39]
So we hope we can still do something this fall
[2:21:43]
in terms of the football season that's going on.
[2:21:45]
But we don't want to risk anyone's safety or the
[2:21:49]
the outlook of the project itself to to force something.
[2:21:53]
We're also able to approve a pretty lengthy list of additional,
[2:21:57]
equipment purchases, because of where we're at with the budget.
[2:22:01]
So things that were what I advocated for was things were precipitated
[2:22:06]
by the field project, not just it would be nice to have a new ex,
[2:22:12]
pitching machines, for example.
[2:22:13]
I pushed really hard to pull those out.
[2:22:16]
You don't need those because of this project.
[2:22:18]
And I don't think that, you know, we should be doing it under that budget.
[2:22:21]
We don't want to capitalize those hurdles, things like that.
[2:22:25]
But we did.
[2:22:25]
We were able to do like all of the movable goals and the,
[2:22:31]
removable bases and all that kind of stuff.
[2:22:34]
The stuff that they really need, as well as the basic maintenance equipment
[2:22:38]
for the field that will be used by our
[2:22:42]
team, routinely, not by, you know, whatever
[2:22:45]
quarterly maintenance is done, but just the day to day maintenance.
[2:22:49]
And that was something we talked originally of outsourcing
[2:22:52]
some of the maintenance because of the cost
[2:22:54]
of some of these machines, but we were actually able to afford
[2:22:57]
the machines to maintain these fields within this project
[2:23:01]
so that our team can do that in a relatively minimal amount of time,
[2:23:03]
and we don't have to pay to outsource that.
[2:23:05]
And Michelle mentioned like new goals.
[2:23:06]
The reason we need some of those is when you get into the surface,
[2:23:09]
everything needs to be on wheels so that when you're moving it,
[2:23:11]
you're not digging up the carpet and things like that. So,
[2:23:15]
field hockey goals and soccer goals are going to have wheels on them.
[2:23:18]
So they're very easy to to just tilt back and roll on off the.
[2:23:22]
Surface on the field need to be removable for obvious reasons.
[2:23:26]
If you're not playing baseball.
[2:23:27]
So it's it's one of those things where again,
[2:23:30]
I drive by, I know what to look for.
[2:23:31]
I know what's been going on
[2:23:32]
so I can see it from the road, like, oh, that's that's really great.
[2:23:36]
But, there is a lot going on and we'll see the multi-purpose field coming up.
[2:23:40]
And I will say, as we get to this point, if anyone wants to see up close,
[2:23:44]
we could figure something out. We wouldn't do everyone at once.
[2:23:46]
But like, I've been able to go on to that
[2:23:48]
and we have a good relationship with them where we can go on site.
[2:23:51]
We, you know,
[2:23:53]
put some safety precautions in place because it is active construction zone.
[2:23:56]
But, if anyone. Did go in the high school library.
[2:23:59]
Yeah. You know, there's, there's. Ways if.
[2:24:01]
If you, if, if anyone wanted to see up close
[2:24:04]
or would come this far along, you've only seen it from the road.
[2:24:06]
We can absolutely accommodate that
[2:24:07]
because it's really exciting to see what we have going on down there.
[2:24:10]
Fantastic.
[2:24:11]
Thank you. Homestretch. Yep. Getting there.
[2:24:14]
Any other committee report?
[2:24:17]
School board.
[2:24:18]
Matters of interest.
[2:24:20]
I just I'm I wanted to say before
[2:24:22]
all the administrators left, but hopefully they're listening at home now.
[2:24:26]
Yeah.
[2:24:27]
I just wanted to congratulate everyone on a very successful
[2:24:31]
first couple of weeks of school.
[2:24:32]
No major incidences that we heard about.
[2:24:34]
So that's a good sign to me that, all our work in preparation paid off.
[2:24:39]
So thank you.
[2:24:42]
One quick thing to add, I'm not sure
[2:24:44]
how many on the board are aware of this, but two citizens did file a lawsuit
[2:24:49]
to block the language from HB 1300 from going on the ballots in November.
[2:24:54]
There was a hearing on Friday.
[2:24:56]
We don't know what the result is.
[2:24:58]
But it's something to pay attention to
[2:25:01]
because depending on whether they get the injunctive relief they're seeking,
[2:25:05]
it may or may not be on our ballots in November.
[2:25:08]
And it's, you know, and if it does end up being something
[2:25:11]
that goes on the ballots in November, I think it will be important for the board
[2:25:14]
to talk about, you know, how we engage with that conversation
[2:25:18]
within the seven of us and then also potentially community wide to think about,
[2:25:23]
you know, how to help our community members understand what that means.
[2:25:28]
Well.
[2:25:28]
Hopefully the Secretary of State
[2:25:30]
actually provides a legitimate response to our letter with all of our questions
[2:25:34]
about how this law applies to Dover and our existing tax cap.
[2:25:39]
So, Secretary, if you're listening.
[2:25:41]
We're anxiously awaiting your response.
[2:25:43]
A couple of weeks over.
[2:25:44]
You don't want to certify elections.
[2:25:46]
That decision on the on the lawsuit should be Thursday.
[2:25:50]
Thursday. Great.
[2:25:53]
Thank you.
[2:25:54]
I think the state had requested for a Tuesday.
[2:25:56]
So that's it's good to know that there's something maybe imminent.
[2:26:01]
Imminent?
[2:26:01]
Yeah. I'll be watching.
[2:26:05]
It's pretty development.
[2:26:07]
Any other matters of interest at this time?
[2:26:10]
Reopening citizens forum,
[2:26:14]
seeing no one else for citizens forum, can I please have a motion to end?
[2:26:17]
Citizens forum. And.
[2:26:19]
Kayla Liz seconds any discussion?
[2:26:21]
All those in favor?
[2:26:22]
Motion passes 7 to 0.
[2:26:24]
Motion to adjourn.
[2:26:25]
Shall are.
[2:26:28]
Michael, I lost the word. Gosh.
[2:26:30]
All those in favor?
[2:26:32]
Thank you everyone. Have a great.