As we enter the new calendar year...
As we enter the new calendar year...
This article summarizes both the December 19, 2023 and January 9, 2024 school committee meetings, which spanned the end of three school committee members’ terms (Mayor Paul Brodeur, Lizbeth Deselm, and Ed O’Connell) and the beginning of three members’ terms (Mayor Jennifer Grigoraitis, Seamus Kelley, and Matt Hartman), as well as the nomination and election of a Chair (Margaret Driscoll) and Vice Chair (Dorie Withey).
Accreditation
Following an intensive self-evaluation and in-person review, the Melrose High School was awarded a three-year re-accreditation from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) in November 2023. As school committee member Jen McAndrew wrote, “This is the result of a multi-year review that happens about every 10 years. The process involves site visits to MHS, meetings and interviews, document and data review and other analyses. This was a time-consuming process led by the MHS principals team with lots of involvement from the District and many staff members.” NEASC recognized that Melrose High School met all of NEASC’s standards in six Foundational Elements and, as Chair Margaret Driscoll noted, “excelled,” in a number of areas of this accreditation process.
Specifically, the Commission commended Melrose High School on a number of factors that it found noteworthy to highlight in its accreditation letter, including:
The inclusionary practices and elevating of marginalized voices that are included in the curriculum model in an intentional way
The un-leveling of grade 9 courses that provide expanded opportunities for students to access the curriculum
The numerous heterogeneous and un-leveled courses that allow students in grades 9-12 more equitable access to the curriculum
The thoughtful process to develop a vision of the graduate with shared input from multiple stakeholders
The vision of the graduate's readily coherent format with hyperlinks to specific programs that support key elements
The numerous academic and social-emotional interventions for all students
The student support team's process that ensures that all students can receive support during the school day
The strong relationships developed between teachers and students in the support classes that serve as the foundation for students' academic and social-emotional success
The positive relationships built between students and administrators that set the tone for teacher-student relationships
The variety of assessment strategies, including the use of departmental common assessments and a capstone project
Enrollment
The school committee reviews enrollment numbers in the district every month, and as of November 2023, the total enrollment Pre-K to grade 12 is 3906. Adding in the out-of-district placements (62 students) and students who receive services only from Melrose public schools but attend another school (57 students), the total enrollment is 4,025.
School Committee Self Evaluation
The School Committee underwent a process of self-evaluation in late 2023, reflecting on “the committee’s strengths along with future considerations to help the Committee continue to strengthen our overall service in order to best improve student outcomes.” Their final report highlighted two strengths of the committee, including the recent hiring a new superintendent and providing more clarity on the budget. Specifically, the committee has worked with administration to build a line-item budget that reflects all expenses across the district, and now provides access to this budget to all stakeholders.
Areas of focus include improved communication, recognizing “how important it is to stay connected to key stakeholder groups through consistent outreach.” As the Committee proceeds with budgeting for FY25, it will consider hosting forums and office hours. Additionally, the committee recognized a strong desire for a successful transition to the new superintendent, noting that Mr. Deleidi, the incoming superintendent, should receive “robust onboarding support which should include mentorship and guidance from the interim superintendent.” Finally, Committee members wish to better understand “how major policy changes and/or programmatic shifts are impacting student outcomes.” That is, when a significant policy change occurs in the district, how is this shift seen in outcome measures, and how can the impact of this shift be both understood and communicated to the community at large.
Registration for Franklin Pre-School and Kindergarten
If you have a child entering kindergarten, please pay attention to upcoming deadlines and requirements in January and February 2024! These deadlines are designed to allow notifications for school assignments to be sent to families in May 2024 (rather than July), in the hope that any conflicts or problems will have ample time to be resolved before the start of the 2024-2025 school year.
Strategic Overview of Melrose Public Schools: Mid Year Update
A broad leadership team from Melrose Public Schools has been working on reviewing and addressing the strategic overview of our schools at the mid-year point. This Strategic Plan overview has five areas: Academic Knowledge and Skills, Personalized and Equitable Opportunities, Global Engagement, Professional Culture, Finance and Operations.
In brief, Melrose MCAS scores show that 80% of Melrose 10th grade students meet or exceed expectations in English Language Arts (ELA) and 63% are meeting or exceeding in Math (which is higher than that state average of 58% in ELA and 50% in Math), and Melrose is seeing incremental growth from the 2021 numbers, which is generally considered the appropriate comparison year.
This data shows that there are still substantial subgroup disproportionality gaps in all grades and all subject areas. The report noted that while these gaps are consistent with state-wide data, they must still be acknowledged and addressed locally.
What is a disproportionality gap?
A disproportionality gap is the difference in outcome between minority groups of students compared to the overall student population. While data for all grades was presented, this table is one example of the grade 10 information:
The table on the right represents data from all 10th grade students, and indicates that 80% of students either meet or exceed expectations in the MCAS ELA (30% + 50% = 80%). The table on the left indicates the subgroups within Melrose 10th grade, and for most subgroups, the percentage of students that meet and exceed expectations is lower, and for some much lower, than the overall 80% number. For example, 55% of Low income students either meet or exceed expectations (16% + 39% = 55%), while 50% of African American/Black students meet or exceed expectations (15% + 35% = 50%).
While this data mirrors that state-wide, it is still incumbent on Melrose to recognize and address these numbers.
The committee discussed how to address these gaps, which included a number of areas, including ensuring high quality instruction, professional development for teachers that includes interpersonal reflections on bias, improving staffing expectations, and addressing financial issues that impact student outcomes.
As part of this conversation, the committee addressed other areas, including speaking, writing, listening, and reading competency across all grade levels.
Part of this conversation included exploring the committees’ suggestions to address these gaps, with “right sizing” a middle school that is “grossly understaffed” as the top priority, specifically addressing issues of class size, tier II support structures, and improving the overall program of studies. Of note is the enormous shift from the elementary school to a middle school environment that requires well-developed executive functioning skills to manage multiple subjects in multiple classrooms and a changing schedule. Additionally, with the increase in the middle school population comes anticipated increases in high school staffing to maintain and sustain this growth that is not simply a short-term population bubble, but rather a long-term increase in our enrollment numbers. Staffing issues at the elementary schools was also noted as a need.
While disciplinary data is included in the report, there was not enough time to discuss it in detail. However, Dr. Turner offered a general analysis by stating that, “If you are a student who is struggling to access your academic programming and is achieving lower scores than your peers, it would…make sense that you don’t feel the same sense of belonging as some of your peers.” And that might account for some of the disproportionate disciplinary numbers that are higher in some subgroups.
DESE Arts and Cultural Vitality Index
The Arts & Cultural Vitality (ACV) Index is a self-evaluation tool that provides schools and districts with a scoring mechanism to improve the understanding of their unique arts and cultural assets as part of their school climate. The Index details a structure for identifying areas of strength, and pinpointing opportunities to advance arts and culture within the school community in four areas: infrastructure, opportunity, participation, and impact.
The overall rating for Melrose suggests that we are “Developing Vitality,” meaning we have a number of strengths already in place, with clear needs and areas of improvement if we are to make the arts and culture a strong part of the Melrose public schools.
Grant funding was used to undertake this evaluation across the entire district, with the following action plan priorities listed:
Explore options to expand elective offerings in the middle and high schools to capture more of the general student population
Explore options to schedule arts courses for arts focused students more effectively
Advocate for more funding opportunities
Incorporate faculty and cross school student body in more arts and cultural events
Promote arts electives to general student body
Student Focus Groups
Explore professional development and cross curricular collaboration opportunities for all teachers
Budget
The costs for FY24 are being closely monitored, and are being documented and updated on the Salary Budget webpage, accessible to the public.
Of note, there has been a spike in unexpected leaves throughout the district. As classrooms cannot be empty, this directly correlates to the need for extra funding for long-term substitutes. Additionally, Ken Kelley, finance director, stated that transportation costs are, as expected, higher than anticipated. On the income side, a specific area of focus is an expansion of the grant applications throughout the system. Nineteen state and federal grants, ranging in amount from $5,000 to over $1 million, help augment the income needs of the district.
Conversations for the FY25 budget are beginning, with a proposed plan to present a budget book for FY25 at the next committee meeting on January 23. While the documented timeline has a public hearing on the budget in April, a proposal to move this date earlier was approved.
The committee also discussed the need for outreach programs and for attending, for example, school PTOs, to help improve parent and public involvement in the upcoming budget process. The superintendent and school committee were both very interested in helping parents and the public be informed and engaged in the next months.
Of most importance is publishing, as widely as possible, the budget timeline and to offer digestible and easily accessible information. While this is subject to change, the current time line, following the January 23 budget book deadline, is (keeping in mind that the April 9, 2024 public hearing will now be held earlier)
School Choice
The inter-district school choice program under G.L. c. 76, § 12B has been in place in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts since 1991. School choice allows families to enroll their child in a school district other than the district in which the child lives. Under the school choice law, a receiving district can withdraw from school choice only if a school committee holds a public hearing on this issue and then votes to withdraw from the school choice program prior to June 1.
Melrose did not participate in school choice last year, and again voted not to participate in school choice for the upcoming school year. This means that Melrose Public Schools will not be accepting out of district students into its school system. This does not apply to Melrose students who wish to attend schools, public or private, outside of Melrose.
We’re all in this together, Melrose.